How displacements defeat justice and law

One of the ways rights are being threatened by government today is the creeping practice of what may be called displacements.

In psychology displacement behavior is the substitution of behavior that is easier, safer, but unconducive to one’s own best interests, for behavior that is more difficult, more risky, more conducive, but perhaps unacceptable in a larger context. The classic example is venting one’s rage by uselessly smashing an inanimate object instead of doing something rational and effective about the real source of the frustration. It is usually to reduce emotional tension, without regard for solving underlying problems.

In law one of the forms displacement takes is making crimes out of what would previously  been considered only evidence of a crime, often weak and circumstantial. This is usually done because the basic crime, the malum in se, is difficult to prove. So possession or production of evidence thought to be associated with the underlying crime is prosecuted, as an act of discretion in which the courts defer to the judgment of the prosecution that the suspect is a bad guy, having that reputation with the prosecutor, even though the prosecutor is unable or unwilling to actually prove he committed that underlying crime, or even that such a crime was actually committed by anyone. Presumption upon presumption, until the burden of proof falls on the accused to prove his innocence instead of on the prosecutor to prove his guilt.

Four such statutes have become especially prominent: civil forfeiture, against  money laundering and structuring, and against making false statements to government investigators.

A recent suspect involving two of these is former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, charged with money structuring and making false statements to FBI agents, about payments to a blackmailer in amounts of less than $10,000 each to avoid, to conceal his alleged acts of child molestation when he was a schoolteacher many decades ago. He was not charged with child molestation, prosecution of which is barred by a statute of limitations, and the payment of blackmail is not a crime, so the payments are not evidence of a crime, because there is no crime. Only the several payments made in amounts of less than $10,000 are considered to be the crime.