New at Reason: Radley Balko on When It's Acceptable to be Ignorant of the Law

August 2, 2010

When Pennsylvania resident Brian Kelly was arrested and charged with a felony in 2007 for recording a police officer during a traffic stop, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania District Attorney David Freed told a local newspaper that he sympathized with Kelly's plight. Kelly was arrested based on a tortured interpretation of an old state wiretapping law. Still, Freed told the paper, "Obviously, ignorance of the law is no defense."

As it turns out, Freed was the one who was ignorant of the law. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that the wiretapping law doesn't apply to recording on-duty public officials because those officials have no expectation of privacy. As Reason Senior Editor Radley Balko explains, while citizens who don't know the law can be fined, arrested, and jailed, cops and prosecutors who wrongly threaten with arrest and wrongly charge people based on a misunderstanding of the law typically face no sanction at all.

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