Nobody is That Honest 

Ann Althouse is talking about the fact that the BTK killer seemed to be an absolute stickler to the rules according to this NY Times article:

[Dennis L.] Rader and his wife of 34 years went to church each Sunday. Sometimes when he left an after-work bar outing to hurry home, his colleagues would privately breathe a sigh of relief; with him gone, they could drink up and tell off-color jokes. As far back as the eighth grade, Mr. Rader was picked for the prestigious school patrol, who carried big red Stop signs and told classmates and drivers when to go and when not to.... [E]xperts on serial killings say that the portrait of Mr. Rader takes that notion of stability, authority and prominence in the community to a level rarely seen.

She asks an interesting question:

Does this mean we should wonder about people who are overly meticulous about rules? Or does it just mean that someone really good at rules would be able to evade discovery for a long time and thus have the opportunity to carry out a series of murders?

This sort of thing makes you wonder, or at least makes me wonder. Not to get on too much of a tangent, but there is a similar joke in California about illegal immigrants. The joke is that you can spot them on the freeway because they're the ones driving 5 under the speed limit.

I had seen this book before (Go Directly to Jail: the Criminalization of Almost Everything) and thought seriously about adding it to my stack, but now Instapundit is recommending it too. I think I just might have to get it now.

So how are all these pieces connected? Well, in a society where it's becoming harder and harder not to break some sort of law... and where you are viewed under more and more scrutiny if you try not to break them... at what point do presumption of innocence and probable cause go out the window? At some point in the future will judges be seeing search warrants where someone is under suspicion for a crime, and they're being too neat and honest?

More importantly... is that already happening? As I get further and further into this book, I start to wonder. While I can't say that I can agree with the author on all the points he makes, he does raise a lot of interesting questions. We're coming to the point where being charged with a crime no longer happens because you broke a law (because you probably have), but because someone decided they wanted to.

I remember when I was on jury duty a couple years ago. My good friend Josh mentioned that he would probably never get picked for a jury. He'd tell the judge (and he honestly still believes this) that people charged with a crime are guilty. The police aren't going to waste their time investigating an innocent person. He's one of my best friends, but I would never want him on my jury.