MOPERY

Gentle readers, there is a sort of joke among police, criminals, and lawyers. It's a spoof of "common law", and it is the crime of "mopery" (Probably where the word "mope" comes from. read on...)

 

 

The offense consists of a blind man spying on a naked woman in the dark.

 

 

I know. "Oh, posh" you're thinking. How preposterous.

 

 

Hold on.

 

 

It really isn't that silly. After all, aren't we trying to make sure everyone is treated equally? If a normally sighted person were peeping at M'lady in total darkness, he would see exactly what the blind man sees: PITCH DARKNESS. So, in the daytime only a sighted person could be charged with "Voyuerism". But in the dark, the blind and the sighted see the same thing.

 

There are hundreds of finely graded and shaded ironies in this one joke. Imagine if Mopery was a statutory offense. Imagine the trial of the blind man, with prosecutors and defense lawyers arguing it all the way up to the Supreme Court.

 

Now, if confronted with a case of mopery, the only reasonable opinion from SCOTUS would of course be (Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the unanimous Court):

 

"We hold that the premise of charging a blind man with a crime solely because he is able to see as well as anyone else when there is no light to be completely ri-god-damn-fucking-DICULOUS.'

 

'We further find that the statutory definition of "mopery" to be frivolous, and therefore find that the State's  arrest, prosecution, and conviction of the plaintiff to be null and void. We reverse the conviction of the plaintiff. Further, and so say we all, we urge the plaintiff to pursue civil action to the extent that he can; if only to give persons in the several State legislators reason to think before they enact idiotic legislation."

 

 

Of course, that's NOT what would come out of SCOTUS. There would be nine different opinions, with all knds of whacky twaddle in each one. The only person on the Supreme Court whom I would trust to write something like the honest opinion I have posited above is Justice Antonin Scalia.

 

And given the upholding of the BLATANTLY un-Constitutional Obamacare, I honestly don't know if the blind man would have to actually go to prison for looking at a naked woman in a dark room. If the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare - and they did - then why wouldn't they uphold a conviction for mopery? Hmm?