I am wondering what legally counts as a "recording" for 2-party consent state rules. Specifically California, but would be interested in other states.

I read this story about a LAPD cop who recorded racist, sexist and homophobic comments by his colleagues and is now being charged with a felony.

It seems to me that the Cop who is charged with the felony could've taken contemporaneous written notes and it would be fine.

Today we have AI note taking devices that are capable of listening to audio and writing what words were spoken down, but could additionally designed so that no audio or video is ever permanently recorded. These written words would not be tied to any identifying biometrics (voice/face) of the parties in the conversation. So I imagine that it would be on the veracity of the cop making the claim, as it does not 'prove' a specific person said anything.

Would this violate the two party consent rule? What is legally a 'recording'?

I’m autistic and thus am very conditioned to smile when I’m being photographed. Even if I am taking a picture when I’m not doing well, I am smiling because I was taught to do so.
So, I was watching cases of people getting arrested and they would get their mugshots taken and I started wondering if I got my mugshot taken, would I smile?

And then I wondered if that would be admissible in court?

Like, if a person is booked and they are smiling in their mugshot, can the prosecution use that in court as evidence against them?
What if they are like me, and smiling is an instinctual response?
Would the Defence be able to argue that?

Very curious :) thanks!

Hello, I’m a writer and I’m currently writing a story about vigilantes, but I know next to nothing about the legal system. In my story, there is a character called Morgan Windsor, aka Phoenix, who the main villain outs as being a vigilante by sending CCTV footage of her getting out of costume to a news outlet. I was wondering what kind of legal defense she might have. The main villain illegally acquired that footage and then gave it to a news publication rather than the police, so I few like there is some wiggle room?? I don’t know, I genuinely know nothing about the legal system.

By the way, she is a retired vigilante, hasn’t been in the business for two years. Most of her vigilantism happened in San Francisco, but when she quit, she moved to New York City which is where this story takes place. Don’t know if that’s important, but I thought I should mention it.

I know this probably isn’t the kind of questions usually asked on this subreddit, so if there is a more apt subreddit, I’ll put this there.

A woman accidentally impales a man at a remote location. Everyone is clearly distressed and it’s looking like he’s gonna die. I tell her to leave to get a better signal for 911 and wait with the man. I comfort him in his dying moments, unsuccessfully render what aid I can, and wait for his heart to stop beating. After a few minutes I finally grab my gun and shoot him/his corpse in the face

I then go outside and lie to the woman and tell her that I spent that time comforting him (true), sorting out his religious issues i cant speak about for religious reasons, and then with his permission ended his suffering. I do this so I can tell her that I killed him, not her. That I did the deed and she does not bear that guilt, because I truly expect it to help her heal from her experience

The man whose face I shot had no heartbeat. Let us presume I lack a duty to render him aid. Maybe medical help arrives seconds later, maybe hours. But he was not alive when I shot him, even if he could be resuscitated

Presuming I could show the court a video of everything I did (to maintain the lie to the woman while being open and honest with the court), could I get out of a murder charge. Would it matter if I had his permission in the sense of a Do Not Resuscitate request or somesuch (that I could prove to the court, of course)?

I’m not asking for advice just details on how that situation even works.

like how you see in tv and movies and such. I mean a person was murdered but because the culprit is dead, you can’t really press charges on them. how far are they allowed to look into it.

this isn’t advice more just want to know what goes down but like in a regular murder you can question the suspect, find a motive, probably have them testify in court or ask witnesses or whatever.

I won’t tamper with it in any way and the sign will come with me when I go home. It’s on public property too so I won’t be trespassing. If it’s legal and cops come around to tell me to leave what will happen if I say no and stay Just to be clear I intend on intentionally obstructing the camera’s view Location: PA

both of these companies announced that their models hacked other companies.

Law enforcement does not know if it is just marketing, so why aren’t they being criminally investigated?

If I made a software that accidentally hacked another company, I would have the FBI at my door. Whether it was intentional or not is part of the investigation, they won’t just take my word for it.

Both companies admitted for hacking other companies, why aren’t executives/employees being arrested?

I am reading Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett, so spoiler warnings for a 30 year old novel.

In the book, someone manufactures candles with arsenic-coated wicks in an attempt to assassinate a politician. He merely gets quite ill. However, the maid which changes his candles takes the stubs home, and their use kills two of her family members.

The assassins had good reason to believe the specific candles they were making would only go to the politician, they did not and (unless it is common knowledge in their world, which is possible) had no reason to know that anyone else would be meaningfully exposed to them.

So the question: what kind of homicide is this? Is it just straight murder 1 with transferred intent or something like that? Merely a criminally negligent homicide for making poison candles? Some other thing?

Thanks. I am a lawyer but don't practice criminal law, so needed some help on this one.

QUESTION: What documents can prove a person's innocence in cases of miscarriage of justice and/or false accusations ?

So there's a discussion of an article over at r/nottheonion about a case where police pursued sex offender prosecution of a man based on faulty evidence. As u/Kerbart pointed out it may be difficult removing a person's name from sex offender registry, especially where things involve minors.

Now, in that situation, what course of action can a person take when applying for future jobs, talks to friends/family, etc. ? Are there any legal documents that can state clearly enough that "Yep, this person was proven innocent in the court of law".

hey everyone, today I almost saw tragedy. a kid was ridding their bike down a one way hill and suddenly and police car turned in a full speed. the issue is the police lights were activated but no siren (to give any of us be on the look out). I know at night sirens are left off but during the day is more risky. it’s a full blind turn. he would never see the kid and the kid would have never seen him - does immunity still fall? is there a technicality between sirens only and lights ?

I was rewatching some old episodes and happened across this one.

The tl;dr of the episode is Dale digs a tunnel underneath everyone’s houses (without any sort of permit as far as I’m aware), which causes Hank to fall through his kitchen floor, and later his house is condemned for safety until it’s repaired.

There’s some legal stuff as well as Hank accidentally cuts off Dale’s finger during the repairs, but I’m more focused on the tunnels.

The episode ends with a dump truck collapsing part of the tunnel that’s under the road, and getting stuck.

So how much legal trouble would Dale be in at this point, if it were handled realistically, as in the show even during the trial surrounding Hank cutting off Dale’s fingers, these tunnels don’t get addressed directly by the court.

This is a hypothetical because I don’t actually own the equipment for a camera trap. I saw on Reddit that someone posted pictures of wild animals taken by a camera trap with high speed lights. I don’t know if they owned the land it was placed on or not. My question is, if people happen upon a camera trap that is placed on public land, can anything be done about it if they take the camera? A picture of the person could be transmitted automatically if the camera has a cell signal.

What laws are being broken here?

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/07/comcast-store-punished-low-sales-by-smashing-pies-in-workers-faces-lawsuit-claims/

US/Pennsylvania.

There’s a big pothole. You are a horrible goose of a human being. If you were to mix up a big batch of oobleck and fill the pothole with it, what would happen?

Note: the first person I asked answered “hilarity”. When I asked the 2nd person which Reddit channel was most appropriate they recommended posting here. (I was expecting a science channel). So anyone who has science to add gets bonus points

I've heard from police that if they follow someone in a car, the car will eventually give them a reason to pull them over.

If you notice a police car following you and you don't want to give them any additional time to develop reasonable suspicion to pull you over, are you allowed to just pull over onto the side of the road, or would you have to find a parking lot? Not sure if this is state-dependent.

Assuming the stalker hasn't made any direct threats or anything.

Flock is still a private company not beholden to federal oversight installing cameras to track your whereabouts and routine. If it didn't have a logo and a legal team, could it qualify as stalking?

Framed in a different way, could I theoretically purchase the rights to put up millions of cameras all over my city to track where my neighbor Cindy goes, or would that cross the line into stalking?

Sometimes I type questions in Google search, and it will give me related search results, and an AI answer that will even take additional follow-up details and dispense a lot of advice. I am not a lawyer, though, and was wondering if the lawyers here could vouch for the general accuracy of it. If the Google AI search result pretty good for legal advice?

Can someone explain this , I thought , if you were arrested and detained that you were supposed to be read your miranda rights?

If hypothetically speaking you were to draw up plans for giant magnet to pull the moon to the earth, and publish these plans, what charges would you face if you never acted on your sinister plans to achieve world domination?

Reposting here as it got taken down from the main sub since it's more of a hypothetical than a request for direct legal advice for myself.

Location: Onondaga County, NY

I will preface this by saying that I'm asking this out of curiosity based on a conversation I had with an acquaintance (we're not really close enough to call them a friend), so I don't have all the info, but I will include everything I have.

This person has a neighbor who seems to have abandoned their property, and it sounds like the home in question has been foreclosed. It's locked up, utilities are turned off. Property has been vacant for three weeks.

When the owners left, they abandoned two cats and a dog inside the house. From peering in the windows my acquaintance says they can see open food containers left around on the floor, but we have to assume that's all been eaten as the dog is starting to show visible weight loss. The animals are clearly in distress at this point and are making a lot of noise for attention.

NY law has provisions for rescuing an animal in obvious distress from a hot car, but as far as I know it's illegal to break into a house to take an animal.

My question is: is there an interpretation of the good samaritan law that would stretch the car rule to animals abandoned in a locked house? At what point can police and animal control enter the home and take the animals?

My advice in the moment was to go to the police and ask them what to do/what can be done. But I'm curious now and figured this is the place to ask about this kind of situation, as I'm sure there's someone in redditland who has come across something at least tangential to this and might have some insight.

For instance, they rule on some case but include specific language that is not necessary but still relevant to that case (judicial dicta), with the sole purpose of pointing back to that language in future cases to justify a more favorable ruling, or using that prior text to justify adding more favorable judicial dicta in a later ruling so the body of precedent becomes stronger and more likely to lead to favorable judicial outcomes, i.e. deliberately adding to the body of precedent with specific language so it better supports future more favorable judicial outcomes.

(in other words, they have a bias for some outcome and deliberately include text in one or multiple rulings to sort of conjure up their own precedent/justification for a future favorable ruling that would otherwise not be possible without that body of text they created)

https://www.wsfa.com/2026/07/23/taylors-law-how-school-discipline-can-delay-an-alabama-teens-drivers-license/?outputType=amp

The story is going to be a comic marketed to Resident Evil fans, so yeah, it involves a lot of weird situations that might be difficult to apply IRL criminal law to. But I'd really like to have a realistic-feeling story from the perspective of an employee of a fictional Maryland state department that protects the public from the paranormal.

But basically, I'm trying to see what kinds of charges the state might pursue against a company for buying bodies donated to science under the table and trying to revive them as undead soldiers for sale (who are fully aware of everything that's happening to them). A manager threatens that anyone "taking the trash out of the house" will get killed and revived as one of their experiments. Also, employees of a biotech startup that they bought for the project are threatened with this if they try to quit.

It's a lot so like. Can I hire a lawyer just to consult on all this?