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To: Tom Clarke who wrote (181454)	10/4/2006 6:10:06 AM
From: Snowshoe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793559

>>I think it IS a crime to have knowledge of a crime and not report it.<< Are you sure? Would this be a federal or state law? Reason I ask is that we just had a major case here in Alaska where three people witnessed a beaten kidnap victim who was later killed, and failed to report it. Astonishingly, they could not be prosecuted because failure to report a crime is not a crime here! It was kind of like that case in Florida, where the little girl was kidnapped by a sex offender and his roommates were never prosecuted for failing to report it. Some legislators are trying to fix the Alaska law, but they are running into problems and the change looks iffy.

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (181454)	10/4/2006 9:40:20 AM
From: Alan Smithee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793559

I think it IS a crime to have knowledge of a crime and not report it. Misprision of felony, under the common law of England, was the crime of failing to report knowledge of a felony to the appropriate authorities. Exceptions were made for close family members of the felon. With the development of the modern law, this crime has been discarded in most jurisdictions, and is generally only applied against persons placed in a special position of authority or responsibility. For example, prison guards who stand idly by while drug trafficking occurs within the prison may be prosecuted for this crime. One form of this crime, misprision of treason, was frequently used in England during the 16th and 17th centuries to punish enemies of the crown. The term misprision can also be applied in some legal systems to a wilful act or omission by a person who is involved in or has knowledge of the facts of a crime, which causes in the end result an innocent person to be punished for the crime; e.g., a frameup. Under the old common law hierarchy of crimes (as treasons, felonies and misdemeanours), misprision of treason was a felony and misprision of felony was a misdemeanour. (There was no such offence as misprision of a misdemeanour.) It is pronounced as ms-przhn. Sometimes, mistakenly pronounced as "misprison." en.wikipedia.org