Chop Shop—Sheriff Ronald “Gun” Ficklin

A sheriff in Louisiana’s St. Helena Parish may have sold a pickup truck “cobbled together with stolen parts to Greensburg, [Louisiana] mayor Kenneth Carter.”^[1] Sheriff Ronald “Gun” Ficklin is under federal indictment for his alleged involvement in an illegal chop shop, and the revelation about the pickup truck comes in nearly 100 pages of “secret FBI documents that a Baton Rouge federal magistrate unsealed last week.”^[2] Sheriff Ficklin is facing 21 counts for the federal crimes of conspiracy, trafficking in motor vehicles with removed or altered identification numbers, removing and altering vehicle identification numbers, mail fraud, aiding and abetting the possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and misprision of a felony.^[3]

If convicted, Sheriff Ficklin could face up to 20 years in prison, a fine, or both.

Misprision of felony is covered by 18 U.S.C. § 4. This statute states that anyone who has knowledge that a felony has been committed, conceals and does not “as soon as possible” make that information known to a judge or other civil or military authority under the United States, can be imprisoned for up to 3 years, fined, or both. This crime is different from accessory after the fact, criminalized under 18 U.S.C. § 3. Under that statute, it is a crime for a person who knows that “an offense against the United States has been committed,” to receive, relieve, comfort or assist the offender in order to hinder or prevent his apprehension, trial or punishment. The accessory after the fact can be punished for up to one-half the maximum punishment for the crime, fined up to one-half the amount prescribed for the crime, or both. However, if the crime calls for life imprisonment or the death penalty, the punishment for the accessory cannot be more than 15 years in prison.

The elements that the government must prove to convict a person for misprision of felony are:

1. the principal committed and completed the alleged felony;
2. the defendant had full knowledge of that fact;
3. the defendant failed to notify the authorities; and
4. the defendant took steps to conceal the crime.^[4]

This law can have some interesting consequences because it can make a person feel that she must notify the proper authorities if she has committed a felony, lest she be charged with two statutory violations. However, because of the Fifth Amendment’s bar on self-incrimination, if the defendant’s duty arose as she was simultaneously involved in criminal conduct, her duty to notify the authorities is “precluded by constitutional privilege.”^[5]

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[1] Penny Brown Roberts, Documents Detail “Chop Shop”, 2TheAdvocate.com, Jan. 17, 2006.
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] United States v. Cefalu, 85 F.3d 964, 969 (2nd Cir. 1996).
[5] United States v. Graham, 487 F. Supp. 1317, 1319 (W.D. Ky. 1980).