thanks to curiositystream for keeping legal eagle in the air get 26 off curiosity stream and nebula using the link in the description everyone knows police can't lie to you false [Music] if you ask a lawyer a legal question the answer is usually it depends because it usually depends the law is a vast and complex thing so it won't surprise any of you that there are many misconceptions about what is and is not illegal the law is complicated and it's easy to get confused if you have no legal experience but the fun thing about law is that people tend to believe that there are certain hard and fast rules that are unfortunately definitely wrong so let's dispel some myths and correct some misconceptions and be honest did you believe any of these things like everybody knows it's illegal to marry your cousin false you can marry your cousin provided it's your first cousin and you live in one of the 21 american states that allow it cousin marriage has always been popular around the world gross but for hundreds of years it was considered a relatively good bet for a long-lasting union you think of all the family that you already share but things started to change in america in the mid-1800s when states decided that cousins marrying cousins was a bad idea and interestingly enough cousin marriages weren't ever outlawed in england and they are still allowed in canada largely because the practice was associated with the aristocracy in america the situation was largely the opposite cousin marriage was viewed negatively in part because it was practiced by people who didn't have lots of money but let's get down to brass tacks first cousin marriage is legal in alabama alaska california colorado connecticut the district of columbia florida because of course georgia hawaii maryland massachusetts new jersey new mexico new york and north carolina in several other states it's allowed with some restrictions these states include arizona illinois indiana utah and wisconsin where first cousin marriage is allowed if the parties are above a certain age or one is unable to produce maine also permits it if a couple obtains a physician's certificate of genetic counseling though note if you do go through with it susan collins may express her displeasure and furrow and eyebrow but then allow you to do it anyway this is disgraceful but i guess this so-called myth is actually true in certain states if you live in arkansas delaware idaho iowa kansas kentucky hey kentucky way to go louisiana michigan minnesota mississippi missouri montana nebraska nevada new hampshire north dakota ohio oklahoma oregon pennsylvania south dakota washington west virginia or wyoming you'll have to look outside of the family reunion to find a spouse which brings us to the next myth the reading of the will because everyone knows when someone dies you gather in a big ornate room and then you wait silently until the executor reads your portion of the will and hopefully explaining that your estranged uncle left you millions of dollars or if you were expecting millions of dollar surprise you get nothing or you're left with just a haunted mansion this is false i'm willing to bet that no one who is watching this video has ever been summoned to a lawyer's office for the reading of a loved one's will nevertheless many people still believe that when someone passes away there will be a family gathering where a lawyer officially breaks the news about who will inherit money in assets this is one of the most reliable plot lines for a daytime and nighttime soap opera i'm left with 40 they are the major shareholders how did daddy do this to me the big event always takes place in the lawyer's office or old-timey library and it involves the whole crazy family all in one room together it's led by a well-dressed lawyer wearing indochino presumably who gets to do the big reveal now you can't blame screenwriters for wanting a reading of the will to be a real thing it's a great way to create dramatic tension and there's a lot riding on this dead person's estate i'm leaving you my keyboard i'm going to keep it in my room at the q mansion please give it to leo will someone walk away rich will someone be disinherited will someone unexpected show up will there be a fight but here's the thing there is no legal requirement that a last will and testament be read aloud to family members or anyone else for that matter all beneficiaries named and will are entitled to receive a copy so they can understand what they'll be receiving from the estate and when those assets will be distributed but there's no requirement that the executor usher everyone into a room where the contents of the will will be revealed in fact lawyers would prefer not to do it this way since we aren't trained to break up fights like a bouncer at scores lawyers prefer to fight with our words not our fists and wound you with a pen rather than a sword so if there's no requirement for wills to be read out loud where did this idea come from well a hundred years ago estate attorneys did gather the family together to read the will because not everyone could actually read the will on their own nowadays we sort of assume that the beneficiaries of a will are actually literate but the main conflict in movies and tv shows involving wills is whether someone will be disinherited and this is definitely a source of conflict in the real world and since most states usually have a very strict time frame for contesting a will it can be to everyone's advantage to start the clock by notifying disinherited heirs earlier rather than later this is actually what happened when president trump's father died because it's 2020 and everything involves donald trump these days fred trump donald trump's father amended his will to disinherit mary trump and fred trump iii the descendants of fred trump jr who died when he was 46. mary and fred were cut out of a 20 share of their grandfather's estate that they might have received had their father lived the other fred trump grandchildren are in line to inherit their parents full shares in fred trump's estate now the trump children including donald told tax authorities that dan's properties were worth around 41 million at the time of his death the new york times reported that the true value was closer to one billion dollars which obviously is a lot of money to be disinherited from fred iii and mary filed a will contest nine months later which brings us to the next legal misconception because everyone knows if you go into a casino and you start counting cards you can be arrested because counting cards is illegal false counting cards while playing blackjack though widely considered to be illegal is not really you're just playing the game that the casino is offering at a much higher level than they're expecting there is no local state or federal law that makes counting cards against the law generally the way it works in blackjack is that it's more favorable for the player when there are more aces and cards that are valued at 10 the tens jacks queens and kings remaining in the shoe so card counting is simply using a system to keep track of the ratio of low cards to high cards and if you have a halfway decent memory you can teach yourself to do this by tracking the changing imbalance of big and small cards in a diminishing deck and since you're just using your brain this is perfectly fine there's even a court case making it legal at least in new jersey because everything is legal in new jersey the new jersey supreme court has ruled that players cannot be discriminated against based on their playing skills even if they are caught counting cards counting cards does not violate the new jersey casino control act however counting cards becomes problematic if you're using a device to count cards or you have friends who are tipping you off though if you're playing in nevada the rules are a bit different there's no nevada law against counting cards but the casinos also have free rein to remove people as they see fit casinos are private property they can remove just about anyone for any reason so if you're caught counting cards in vegas even with your brain you can expect the pit boss to pull you aside and prohibit you from playing blackjack which takes us to the next legal misconception because everybody knows that you have to wait 24 hours to report a missing person even if you know that your loved one is missing you were there when the dark van pulled up beside your loved one the sliding door opened and some henchmen who were wearing black shirts that said henchmen on it grabbed your loved one and threw them in the van and drove off and then of course you go to the local chief of police who of course you trust because he's been a long time family friend and you confide and say that you saw them abducts your loved one and he says look i'm sorry i believe you but i can't do anything about it because you have to wait 24 hours before you can report a missing person and it sounds reasonable it sounds like a law that actually exists but of course your long-time family friend has been in on the conspiracy from the very beginning so obviously then you have to take the law in your own hands because you waited 24 hours to report a missing person but that is false [Laughter] a lot of people think that if a person is missing you have to wait 24 hours to report it to the authorities but in reality there is no state or federal law requiring police departments to wait 24 hours before investigating a missing person's case in fact in 1990 the crime control act became law which mandated that all law enforcement agencies immediately report a missing child under the age of 18 to the national crime information center at the department of justice and in 2003 president george w bush signed the protect act which included suzanne's law raising the age to 21. so anyone under that age could be reported to the national database immediately suzanne lyall was a 19 year old college student who disappeared in 1998 and when lyle's disappearance was reported to campus police officers told her parents that brief absences were not uncommon for college students so they shouldn't worry since she would probably turn up she was unfortunately never seen again and as suzanne's case demonstrates there is some truth to the myth that for missing adults police departments once had waiting periods before they would take a missing person's report the common belief was that most people who seem to be missing actually return fairly quickly today most law enforcement agencies have reversed course even for adults this is partly because in the age of the cell phone most people are reachable relatively quickly and if they don't respond something is likely to be wrong but to sum it up when an adult or child goes missing it should be immediately reported and under suzanne's law federal state and local law enforcement must report all missing persons up to the age of 21 to the doj without delay and the police are obligated to investigate right away which takes us to the next legal misconception which is that if you are accused of a crime everyone knows that you can't be convicted on circumstantial evidence alone because everyone knows circumstantial evidence is weak and can't lead to a conviction false criminal defendants often tell their lawyers all the prosecutors have on me is circumstantial evidence and you can't convict on circumstantial evidence alone but the number one mistake people make about criminal law and frankly civil law for that matter is that circumstantial evidence is not enough to convict but there's no law saying that and in fact the law says the absolute opposite the standard of proof in criminal trials is beyond a reasonable doubt and that means that the prosecution must prove that the defendant is guilty of a crime charged to the extent that no reasonable person could have a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty and the prosecution can prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt by building a case through direct evidence circumstantial evidence or a combination of both direct evidence directly shows the defendant's guilt requiring no inference whatsoever direct evidence would be a video showing someone is killing the victim or a witness testifying that they saw the person murdering that victim circumstantial evidence on the other hand is indirect evidence that may lead to the inference that the defendant committed a crime even though there's no direct proof the key word here is inference since circumstantial evidence allows jurors to infer facts that the prosecutors don't have direct evidence to prove but circumstantial evidence can be extremely strong even dna evidence considered some of the strongest evidence out there is circumstantial for example if a criminal defendant had traces of the victim's blood in their apartment then you might make the inference that that person was in fact the killer though it's possible that that blood could have gotten there under other circumstances so that might be extremely strong evidence but there might be an explanation for it that's circumstantial evidence of course not all circumstantial evidence is created equal some is stronger and weaker than others and this is where jury discretion comes in it's up to the individual jurors to weigh the importance of each piece of evidence and then decide together whether the prosecution has proven its case for example there was no direct evidence that infamous casey anthony killed her daughter kaylee but the prosecution thought they had strong circumstantial evidence their theory was that casey used chloroform to suffocate her child however the child's body was so badly decomposed that there was no definitive determination of the cause of death the prosecution had evidence that someone in anthony's household had done in internet searches for information on chloroform and traces of chloroform were found in the trunk of anthony's car and the prosecution hoped that the jury would draw an inference that the internet search in chloroform traces along with the fact that anthony didn't report her child was missing for a month proved that she killed her child and of course a lot of people believed that as well however the jury did not think that that was enough to prove that casey anthony killed her daughter beyond a reasonable doubt if the same case was tried to ten different juries it'd be interesting to know how many of them would have drawn the same conclusion but that's not how our system works you can be convicted or found not guilty based on circumstantial evidence alone but that brings us to the next legal misconception which is that everybody knows that if you're doing something illegal and you think you might be interacting with an undercover cop you should ask them if they are a police officer because everyone knows police can't lie to you false our final misconception is that police cannot lie to you during an interrogation actually they absolutely can use deception there's actually a supreme court case on it in fraser versus cut the supreme court affirmed the legality of deceptive interrogation tactics police in that case got a tip that martin frazier a 20 year old u.
s marine might be involved in the murder of russell anton marlux frazier along with his cousin jerry lee rawls were seen in a bar with the victim before the murder during the interrogation the police falsely informed frasier that rawls had already confessed and implicated him in the murder fragrance denied any involvement in the crime and suggested speaking with an attorney but police continued to question him police got frazier to confess this confession was used against him at trial and he was convicted of murder rawls also pleaded guilty to the same offense the supreme court rejected frazier's appeal stating that although police misrepresented raul's testimony that did not make the confession inadmissible and later case law has interpreted this as allowing deception during interrogations this includes lying about evidence like fingerprints or dna however there are some limits police for example can't misrepresent a person's basic legal rights so if you don't know now you know now obviously this is hashtag not legal advice but hopefully you know a little bit more about what isn't the law and if you're the kind of person that likes to dispel legal myths or at least lord them over your unassuming friends you can learn about one more legal myth over at nebula because everyone knows you can't yell fire in a crowded theater fire sometimes even legal issues are too hot for youtube because youtube's algorithm can be capricious which is why my creator friends and i teamed up to build our own platform where creators don't need to worry about demonetization or the dreaded algorithm it's called nebula and we're thrilled to be partnering with curiositystream because nebula is a place where creators can do what they do best create it's a place where we can both house our content ad-free and also experiment with original content new series that probably wouldn't work on youtube in fact if you like this episode the version that i put up on nebula removes this ad entirely and replaces it with an extended version that goes into the myth of yelling fire in a crowded theater and actually due to popular demand almost all the videos that i put up on nebula are both ad-free and have an extended discussion they're also released early before the youtube version goes live nebula features lots of youtube's top educational-ish creators like lindsey ellis thomas frank and charles the coconut with his sidekick patrick willems this is charles my new friend we also get to collaborate in ways that wouldn't work on youtube like tom scott's amazing game show money where he pits a bunch of famous youtubers against each other in psychological experiments where they can either work together or profit individually it is ridiculously good so what does this have to do with curiosity stream well as the go-to source for the best documentaries on the internet they love educational content and educational creators and we worked out a deal where if you sign up for curiosity stream with a link in the description you also get a nebula subscription for free and to be clear that nebula subscription is not a trial it's free for as long as you're a curiosity stream member and for a limited time curiosity stream is offering 26 off of their annual plans that's less than 15 per year for both curiosity stream and nebula and because i'm a lawyer i made sure that 26 off is by contract the best deal you will find anywhere for this bundle and since we've gotta stay inside anyway i'm sure you'd love watching curiositystream's awesome documentaries and watch tom scott torture your favorite youtubers on nebula so if you click the link in the description you'll get both curiosity stream and nebula for 26 off or you can go to curiositystream. com legaleagle it's a great way to support this channel and educational content directly for just 14. 79 per year just click on the link in the description or go to curiositystream.
