Even so, the idea that someone can be given 21 years for recording a phone conversation with a public official is insane.
The penalty for negligent homicide is 7 years.
Aggravated felonious sexual assault 10 years minimum.
Abuse of office is a misdemeanor.http://www.copblock.org/8754/manchh/
The first video has a recording of him interviewing police in public, standing out on the street.
The second video shows him calling the police department and asking them for commentary about the police-slamming-kids-head slamming video. The call is about 15 seconds long, the police have no comment and hang up. He then has a 2 minute call there with the school principal.
The third video is the slamming the head video. Basically an officer assaults a student and another student recorded it.
The "State of NH" vs Adam Mueller
http://www.scribd.com/collections/3735171/The-State-of-NH-vs...
> Basically an officer assaults a student and another student recorded it.
I've watched the video, and it looks to me like the kid tries to resist the officer in some way, it escalates, and when he gets turned around his chest goes down on the table. I wouldn't call this a clear-cut example of an assult.
The _kid_ tries to resist the _fully grown man_ in _some way_...
What way? If your observation is acute enough to see through the opaque man to tell that it's "his chest [that] goes down on the table", then surely it's good enough to tell us in what way the child tries to resist.
What disturbs me is how ready people are to dismiss this as acceptable. Whether force is warranted or not, whether the minor did something or not, whether he resisted or not, the force is still clearly excessive. A submission hold would be sufficient. And I would expect that the policeman would know how to execute a submission hold. So I can only think that he chose not to, and instead decided to, how do you American's put it, 'open a can of whoop-ass' on the boy.
These days, American schools more resemble prisons than places of learning.
In most states, only one person needs to be aware that the conversation is being recorded. His conduct would have been completely legal in the majority of the US. [1]
It seems like 21 years is a very harsh sentence for conduct that isn't physically dangerous and isn't even illegal in the majority of the US.
I seem to remember reading or hearing somewhere that police departments actually like the rule used by most states, "recording is legal as long as at least one participant in the conversation knows about it." This makes gathering evidence in investigations a lot easier because you can record everything without a warrant. If we suppose the world consists of "criminals," "informants," and "police," and police and informants always know about their own recording devices, then criminal-to-criminal calls are the only case that needs a warrant in a state with one-party notification. Informant-to-criminal and police-to-criminal can legally be recorded without a warrant, probable cause, reasonable suspicion, or any basis whatsoever in such states.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_recording_laws#Unite...
It can produce some oddities in companies as well. It's now assumed that a corporation can read employees' email, for example, or record their internet or IM traffic. But in a two-party-consent state, it would be illegal for your employer to record telephone calls made from your office phone, unless they get the consent of each person you talk to.
My understanding is that the most restrictive state applies, so you don't even have to be in a two-party state, you just need to be calling one.
In any case, this is why every call center you talk to says "this call may be recorded" when you first connect. It's not just a courtesy!
According to Article 22 of the New Hampshire constitution, "free speech ... [is] to be inviolably preserved". It is difficult to reconcile this "wiretapping" law with the constitution.
Why do you think that free speech implies a right to record what someone else says without their permission?
What he is being charged for is calling police officials and others on the phone after this, and recording the conversations without getting the other parties permission to record the phone call... Then posting those recordings online.
This is how 95% of these stories are. Facts are hidden, what happened is misrepresented; stories to fit narratives are made up.
Don't get me wrong, if you call an on-duty police official at the police station maybe they shouldn't be given/expect privacy, but this story makes it seem that this guy is being charged for posting the mentioned video. Clearly he is not.