"arrest" vs. "charge"

Dave Wilton dave at WILTON.NET
Tue Apr 3 19:27:37 UTC 2012


Black's Law Dictionary (8th ed) defines "arrest" as:

"1. A seizure or forcible restraint. 2. The taking or keeping of a person in
custody by legal authority, esp. in response to a criminal charge; specif.,
the apprehension of someone for the purpose of securing the administration
of the law, esp. of bringing that person before a court."

So in legal circles there is both a general sense and a specific one related
to being charged with a crime.

What does the AP Stylebook say? (I no longer have one in my possession.) It
could very well be that journos are advised to keep to the narrow sense in
order to avoid libel suits by people taken into custody but never charged.

And for what it's worth, the last time I underwent a background check for a
security clearance, the powers-that-be distinguished between being
"arrested" and "being detained," requiring me to tell them whether either I
had ever been either (in my case, yes to "being detained"). But that dual
language was undoubted chosen to ensure that those being investigate were
complete in their answers.



-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Jonathan Lighter
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2012 1:31 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: "arrest" vs. "charge"

It must be me. For over a week, highly-paid newspeople and others have been
insisting that George Zimmerman was "never arrested" by police.

Then, a police video surfaced that shows Z. beiin custody at the police
station with his wrists cuffed behind his back. .

In fact, CNN has enhanced the video to help answer the question of whether
Z. had a head injury.  Immediately after two minutes of discussing said
video and enhancement, another journalist informs us that controversy still
swirls around the issue of why Z. "was not arrested."

What is wrong with these people/ me?  Isn't the issue that Z. was released
without being *charged*?  He sure looked like a guy under arrest to me.

This makes even "brokered-convention"-gate look trivial by comparison.

JL

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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