"arrest" vs. "charge"

[Laurence Horn]

Then there's the classic wording from British crime fiction:  "... is helping the police with their enquiries".

LH


On Apr 3, 2012, at 2:43 PM, Victor Steinbok wrote:

> You're right... sort of
> There are also various attempts to distinguish between detained, seized
> and arrested. Some have legal justification, some are just wind.
>
> He was most certainly detained--he was picked up, put in the vehicle,
> cuffed, then brought to the precinct. Just being stopped and unable to
> leave qualifies for seizure, I believe. But was he arrested? Well, it's
> not entirely clear. It's quite common to refer to "arrest" if someone's
> been picked up and restrained, which clearly happened here. But,
> suppose, cops pick up a kid just to scare him, handcuff him, place him
> in the car, drive around the block, then release him. Was the kid
> arrested? I doubt anyone would say that he was. So what would be the
> difference between that situation and Mr. Z? Being charged is easy--you
> need a special document from someone other than the arresting officer
> and clearance from above. From what we know from this story, several
> people in the police department wanted him charged, but they were
> overrulled--so he was NOT charged.
>
> But not the frequent difference in language that is usually glossed
> over--one is arrested "on suspicion of" murder or some other crime, but
> he is charged "with" that crime. So one clearly be arrested and even
> accused--by the police--without being charged.
>
> But it is possible to have an extended detention without actual arrest.
> Arrest is a formal procedure--all sorts of paperwork to fill out,
> fingerprints, etc. Mugshot is just the first step. Once the paperwork
> has been filled out, you've been arrested--merely having your mugshot
> taken is not quite enough, according to some definitions. The point of
> processing is important--if you've been processed as having been
> arrested for some cause, you have to report that on every form that asks
> if you've ever been arrested. If you were merely detained, you don't
> have to report it--you have not been formally arrested.
>
> So if no paperwork was filled out to process the arrest, Z has not been
> arrested. He might have been detained on suspicion of homicide, but not
> arrested. It's also possible that he indeed WAS arrested, but then
> released without having to spend a night in jail--yet another very loose
> measure which people think of when they think of an arrest. So the best
> we can do is that, by some measures, he's been arrested, but it's quite
> likely that no formal arrest was ever made. If you think of all those
> black-and-white movies that use lines like "You're under arrest!" they
> mean absolutely nothing--just saying that you're under arrest does not
> mean that you've been arrested.
>
> Does this make any sense or am I just running around in circles?
>
>    VS-)
>
> On 4/3/2012 1:30 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>> 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
>
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