If you're a green card holder and leave the card at home, and run into a law enforcement officer, that's a $100 fine or 1 month in jail. Luckily I've got my photocopy here, ah wait, that's insufficient. Good point -- scum of the earth, I'll see myself to jail.
You can go to jail for possessing a lobster less than 3.25" long even if you found it washed up on shore, you absolute monster [3]. Have you, yourself, ever held a short lobster? Remember! Not knowing isn't an excuse either!
Nobody even knows how many federal laws there are [4]. We've tried to count them and failed a number of times. Stalin's head of secret police once said "Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime" -- well, if the set of crimes in the US is un-countable, I bet you that works equally well here.
I've never met you, but I guarantee, you've accrued enough potential legal liability to spend the rest of your miserable life in prison, and yet you're out wandering around, calling others scum (in a different thread) and showing off that you've never been to prison. So what's difference? Luck I guess.
[1] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2014/01/21/84-year-old-jaywalker...
[2] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/do-i-really-need-car...
[3] https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2016/08/no/dmf-lobster-...
[4] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304319804576389...
And being treated like a sub-human in a prison you got thrown into, for what you consider to be an unjust decision is bound to make you resent the law and increase your chances of ending up there again. How is he not seeing that?
https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...
You're still a criminal, but depending on how you picked the laws you're probably not subhuman.
> Not an excuse.
It's not a legal defense (usually), but it's a defense against being antithetical to society itself.
What is the context for this response?
>Not an excuse.
Not an excuse for what? Treating criminals like human beings?
Some of them have disrespect for some laws, which can be entirely reasonable and not make them lesser at all.
Some of them were desperate.
Very few fall into the bucket you described.