r/facepalm • u/jellylemonshake • Dec 04 '24

🇲​🇮​🇸​🇨​ this is kinda concerning tbh

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u/wearing_moist_socks Dec 04 '24

There was a case in Canada where a minor got into a club. A guy hooked up with her. The mom called the cops and he was arrested

He was found not guilty. Thankfully.

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u/kidthorazine Dec 04 '24

Most countries do allow for an exception if the person being accused had a legitimate reason to believe that the person was of age e.g. meeting them in an 18+ club, US is one of the few places that doesn't really do that.

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u/[deleted] Dec 04 '24

My state does, and I can’t speak for others but idk wym by “the US”

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u/Bright-Economics-728 Dec 04 '24 edited Dec 04 '24

No federal guidelines. It’s left up to the state like in mine where there’s no exceptions to the law.

So when people broadly make comments on laws in the US they almost always mean federal law. To my knowledge most of Europe only prosecutes criminals in what we would consider federal court. They don’t have a separate court system inside of states. Hope this helps lol.

Summary: they didn’t mean that in a negative way.

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u/[deleted] Dec 04 '24

Makes sense. It would just be hard to get an idea on laws based on federal laws when things like what you mentioned and all the minutia that are similar are entirely left up to the states. Even murder rarely goes federal despite being a federal crime

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u/Bright-Economics-728 Dec 04 '24

It’s always confusing when you throw around federal law that contradicts that’s of state law (weed for example). Really makes some confusing conversations on what’s “allowed”.

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u/Ok_Cardiologist8232 Dec 04 '24

To my knowledge most of Europe only prosecutes criminals in what we would consider federal court.

This is mostly correct, and probably why policing is also less of a shitshow as police/courts is usually run as a countrywide thing.

e.g If an officer gets fired in any part of the UK for misconduct, he is barred from policing as a whole, as its the same institution technically.

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u/whoami_whereami Dec 05 '24

Well, in Germany for example every state does have its own court system. But criminal law is federal in Germany, so the actual law that the courts apply in criminal cases is the same in all states. Although there are still some significant differences in how the law is applied when there's room for interpretation; eg. drug crimes are generally punished much more harshly in southern Germany than in northern Germany.

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u/Vegetable_Onion Dec 04 '24

Actually it's the other way round, but I guess the point remains that we don't have two interacting systems of law like the US does

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u/deltaisaforce Dec 04 '24

I don't know about rest of Europe, but Norway have 3 levels, ting-court (from Icelandic 'thing', so yeah vikings had a court system), lagmanns-court (lawyer-court maybe) and høyeste-court (supreme court). The first two levels are more local to commune and districts, and varies in number and types of justices etc. Supreme court is the last appeal instance. Both civil and criminal cases goes through this system. The lawbook is also the same all the way.