Easy & convenient way to get out of handcuffs

[kodierer]

If you take off the handcuffs the police put on you it is attempted escape, which is worse than resisting arrest. Anyway we are all law abiding citizens here, and so none of us have reason to pick hand cuffs except as a hobby in our private homes, unless your a magician that is the only place you should do it.
Anyway a well bent safety pin will work as well. Most double locking handcuffs aren't high security(in america anyway). Having handcuff keys, or paper clips, or saftey pins, or those clips are not illegal, as was mentioned unless they find it on you after the fact. If you have one of these items key, or not they can still hit you with something. a staple could be considered a weapon for instance.
Because of the way the justice system works it isn't uncommon for the police to try and charge you with a millions little things to try and get you to plea bargain for one.

[vector40]

Aye, double jeopardy says you cannot be tried twice for the SAME crime. If I'm tried for killing you in the dining room with a lead pipe on April 2nd at 1:00 AM, I can still be later tried for killing you on the boardwalk with a heavy plug spinner at midnight; it's not at all the same crime, it just has some of the same particulars.

[master in training]

no idea what it was, i may even have been dreaming, but im sure i recall seeing or hearnig about a film where someone is found guilty of killing their husband/wife and then the person who was sent to prision is later released and actually kills the other person, but somehow makes it look like it really happened on the original date, thus making it look like the same crime so they could not be charged with it.

[digital_blue]

M.i.T: You're right about all of it except the part about making it look like it happened earlier. That was not part of the movie. The movie was called Double Jeopardy. Elijah had it mostly right, except, as I recall, it was the wife that was charged and eventually hunted down her husband and killed him, but couldn't be charged a second time for killing him. Interesting idea, mediocre movie, not really sure if the legality of it is sound though.

db

[master in training]

db, i definaly remember them making it look like it happened at the date of the first crime they were charged with, so i probably was dreaming, lol!

[NKT]

It was a terrible script! Danged silly premise as well.

However, the idea was, he had framed her for killing him, and then gone underground. When she gets out, she hunts him down to kill him, and the weak idea that she will get away with it is the token plot driver and name. It would have been far better if they had dropped that aspect altogether.

At the end she is left to die in a locked coffin that she shoots her way out of. Surely shooting the guy stuffing you in the coffin would have been more sensible? Claim self-defence against clearly premediated murder! Oh, no, that might go against the Hollywood legend that all guns are bad, even when they are good.

Anyway, I don't agree with the "new evidence" thing. You should not even be charged if there is insufficient evidence of the crime and who did it! Murder has no statue of limitations on it... Find the body in 50 years time, and it is an old murderer on trial!

I'm sure anyone who has ever seen the endless mill that is the "law" in action would agree.

And don't forget the Guildford Four or the Birmingham Six, who would have been hung, but were later found to have had confessions beaten out of them, added to, all sorts of things, and were eventually released on appeal after something like 15 years!

Anyone looking at the Jill Dando case in depth should be able to see the guy fitted up for it was just that - fitted up. The only hard evidence they had was a speck of primer residue... except it clearly wasn't primer residue, as it had only two of the three vital ingredients, and, since he had owned a blank fireing pistol some years before, even if it had been primer residue, so what? Stuck in a crevice of a pocket on a jacket? My God!

It was only because he was the local weirdo that he was even suspected, then the pressure got too much, and bingo! He's our man. I don't think he was even mentally capable of thinking such a thing...

[raimundo]

ashley judd was the woman in the movie, but I don't remember the coffin at the end, just her clevage, and since yesterday, a lot more occured to me about the FBI making so called scientific evidence out of stupid things, they were testifying in court to the match of a bullet to the bullets in a box of unused cartridges and for years were saying that the lead had trace elements in it that allowed a metalurgical match that couldn't be scientifically disputed, until they tried it on a guy rich enough to afford a real defence, and it comes out that bullets are made by casting in molds from typically huge lead ingots that are melted down in a large crucible, and from one ingot, as many as one point five million bullets are made. and the molds and crucible are in no way broken or washed out before they go on to the next lead ingot, which itself is cast in a large mold one casting after another. The science presented by the FBI was completly scientifically repudiated, and show to have been a crock of lies all along. It is good when government gets the right person for a crime, but they don't have much ability with mysteries, they want to get someone, and they don't care who. google false confessions or dna exonerations to see what they have been up to. The FBI has famously convicted innocents knowingly just for political purposes, it goes back to the 1930's and continues today. Even when they know or later discover who the real perpetrators are, they will not admit corruption or error. The thing with the various crime labs that have been shown to be cooking the evidence to fit the theory is that we only know about the ones where a whistleblower on the inside was lucky enough to get the story to someone who was willing to publish it in the media. Most of the whistleblowers are silenced before this can happen, and media does not buck the power very often.

[digital_blue]

I can agree that the movie wasn't spectacular. The premise seemed kind of neat though. I don't know if taking the Double Jeopardy element out of the movie would have been any better. It certainly would have made the name silly! As for the false evidence issue, it's not just the FBI. We in Canada have recently had a number of high-profile cases where people have served a large number of years in prison for the crime, only to have new evidence such as DNA prove that they were completely innocent from the get go. There will likely always be the problem with law enforcement getting too eager to get "their man" that they overlook the facts and get the wrong guy. It happens. The opposite is probably not a good situation either. I don't know that I would want to live in a world where the justice system is any more crippled than it is today; and it alread is pretty crippled. Let's face it, murderers are getting rediculously short sentences (in terms of actual time served) and for some reason we all just accept this.

In the words of Clancey Wiggum "I'd rather let 1000 guilty men go free... than chase after them."


db

[master in training]

ha ha, nice post db kept me busy for a good 5mins!

[kodierer]

Clancey Wiggum
Is that from the simpsons
I don't know, but in wyoming don't plead insanity for anything. They won't even fight it really, because once your in there is an unlikely hood of getting out.
A guy up here plead insanity for statatory rape, and has been there for 15 years, and will probably never be released.
If he would have plead guilty he would have been out in 4.

[lastomega]

ok kinda back to original topic...but kinda not.

i think i found a way to use a soda can to pick the lock
first u take off the little thing on the top. then break it in half. i bet u could use that...

[solorpnez]

while going through the metal detectors at the courthouse here in orange county, i did as always, set my chainless wallet on the conveyor, to be x-rayed,and my keys in the little plastic tub the deputy was holding. as i picked up my wallet, and reached for my keys, the deputy immeadiatley pulled me aside and asked if i was law enforcement...

let me say having a handcuff key in your posession is not viewed as "harmless" by these guys. after explaining to a genuinely displeased officer that i wasn't law enforcement and oblivious to it being on the keychain (my girlfriends keys i told him, as i had borrowed her car to get to court) he relaxed slightly and told me to go on ahead and when i was ready to leave they'd be waiting for me at the information desk.

needless to say i was able to pick "my girlfriends" keys as promised, only missing the handcuff key. serves me right i guess--- i had made no less than five trips to court with that key there before it was noticed.

[digital_blue]

Two things seem evident to me from that story.

1) It seems to me to ba an unfortunately typical example of law enforcement overstepping their bounds.
2) You have taken far too many trips to the court house.

db

[taylorgdl]

Again going back to actually getting out of the handcuffs (ignoring the legallity of the situation), I find that shimming the dog tooth type mechanism to be quicker than actually picking the lock. Easiest thing to use (and often found discarded) is a hair clip (you call it a bobby pin over the otherside of the pond, I think). Not that I'm suggesting that you've all got long hair and need it tied back or anything.

Just break off the end of the straight side and slide the shim between the swing arm and the main lock housing (you following this ? its late and I should've bought the laptop with the bigger screen).
Like I said, you can often find them discarded, or attach one to your belt, headboard etc. You just never know when you might need it, depending on if your luck is in or not.

[vector40]

Ordinary handcuffs strike me a bit like round combo Masterlocks. There's just so many ways of handling them that actually getting them open isn't really the issue.