Felony charges for former Maple Tavern owner, manager who sold Spotted Cow beer

[Xipe Totec]

A former Minnesota bar owner and manager are each being charged with a felony for running “Spotted Cow” beer out of Wisconsin and selling it at their restaurant, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday.

http://www.fox9.com/news/88472556-story

Greedy bastids!

[Nevernose]

1. Wisconsin beer being sold in Minnesota!?!?!

Won't someone think of the children? How will we ever sleep again?

Look: I get that there are regulations in place for a reason, but a felony?!?! Felonies are supposed to be reserved for rapists and killers and bankers. No wonder we incarcerate more people per capita than anywhere else on Earth -- including North Korea. Did they send in SWAT, too? These are two schmucks who will statistically face a lifetime of on/off incarceration, underemployment, petty crime to make up the difference, and so will their immediate families. Plus they shut down a local business, drying up revenue for employees, distributors, local vomit removal services, and god only knows what else.

[Jim Beard]

2. They gotta protect the home state Breweries.

[NutmegYankee]

3. There was a book about this: Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent

The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior. The volume of federal crimes in recent decades has increased well beyond the statute books and into the morass of the Code of Federal Regulations, handing federal prosecutors an additional trove of vague and exceedingly complex and technical prohibitions to stick on their hapless targets. The dangers spelled out in Three Felonies a Day do not apply solely to “white collar criminals,” state and local politicians, and professionals. No social class or profession is safe from this troubling form of social control by the executive branch, and nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional democracy hangs in the balance.

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229


The author is a mixed bag politically, but he does hit hard on our national obsession with locking people up. States have started to do this "felony" creep as well, as witnessed here.

[Xipe Totec]

7. Isn't this a violation of the Commerce Act though?

Interference with interstate commerce.

Specifically Extortion by Fear:

The Hobbs Act covers extortionate threats of physical, economic and informational harm (i.e. blackmail). To be "wrongful," a threat of physical violence must instill some degree of duress in the target of the extortion.[2] Furthermore, it is unlikely an economic threat is "wrongful" for Hobbs Act purposes unless a defendant purports to have the power to harm another person economically and that person believes the defendant will use that power to deprive him of something to which he is legally entitled.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbs_Act

[CommonSenseDemocrat]

5. Totally agreed. May be worth a summons, not a felony

[HooptieWagon]

4. If that's the best use of LE's time,...

...then I suggest there be several laid off as being unnecessary.

[flying rabbit]

6. A felony is excessive.

It is damn good beer though.

[Enrique]

8. bad PR

i would think.

[Buns_of_Fire]

9. "Son, don't you know haulin' Spotted Cow over the state line is bootleggin'?"

Not quite Smokey and the Bandit material...

[Xipe Totec]

10. Haulin spotted cows across state lions for illegal porpoises. nt

[Buns_of_Fire]

11. "...and he's in violation of the Mann Act..."

It might work, after all. Be a pretty short movie, though.

"Now, gettin' across the state line and back in an hour, that's no problem..."

[Generic Other]

12. Is he related to Cliven Bundy?