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Moon Rock Winds Up In Court
Lothar+0 writes "In United States v. Lucite ball containing lunar material (an actual case, I'm not making this up, folks), the feds are suing to get back a moon rock from an American who brought it back from Honduras. They're alleging that this rock from the Apollo 17 mission is stolen property; ironic considering that NASA took something that wasn't under U.S. jurisdiction."
A question: If the "Lucite ball containing lunar material" is the defendant, and unless it speaks (which would certainly be really weird if it does), how's it gonna defend itself?
Must be something in the American legal system I suppose?
Somehow, I don't think so.
Blount vs. McIverson? Which one was the Federal Government? I call troll.
Is that the U.S. Federal government is spending tax money, and personel resources in setting up "stings" to retrieve moon rocks. Seriously... with all the political corruption, coroporate bullying, and other things going on in the country over the last 15 years, would you rate a moon rock sting as a worthy use of your tax dollars? You know the gov can't do anything for less than $200,000 these days. What did this "sting" cost the people? What corporate embezzler, political bribe or corporate espionage was not thwarted because the fed thought it more prudent to search for moon rocks?
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
"The litigated rock arrived on Earth from the last manned moon mission in 1972, was encased in Lucite, attached to a plaque and presented as a gift by President Nixon to the Honduran government the following year."
I'd have to say at that point the Government of the United States gave up any claim of ownership we had.
1.NASA retrieves rock from moon. US government now owns moon rock
2.US government encases rock in lucite ball and gives ball to Honduran government. Honduran government now presumably owns moon rock (unless there was some condition attatched to rock that specifies that US government retains title in which case things are different).
Honduran dictatorship then appears and rewrites the law giving them rights to all property of the old government, including the rock. Honduran dictatorship now owns rock (presumably).
Now somehow the rock gets into the possession of the colnel. If the transfer to the colnel was illegal under honduran law (i.e. the colnel stole the rock) then the colnel should be charged with theft and the person who bought the rock from him should, at best, be charged with possession of stolen property (but if you buy stolen propery then you cant be found guilty of possession unless it can be proved that you knew it was stolen when you bought it). If the transfer happened legally under honduran law(because the dictatorship gave it to him) then presumable the colnel now owns the rock and therefore he can legally transfer that which he owns to someone else in exchange for money.
"IN almost all cases, owning lunar material is illegal unless you can show a clear paper trail back to nasa" is kind of scary.
What they are implying is not that posession of moon rocks is restricted, but that, unless you can show clearly how you got it, it was probably stolen (because if it wasn't, you'd be able to prove how you got it).
This scares me a bit, though. How long until we are required to show chain of custody documetns & receipts for every single object we own, lest the government sieze them as stolen?
And whatever happened to posession being 9/10ths of the law?