Re: Q$BHH=3FM=1B(B_=3D_"suspect"=3F?=

From: Don Kirkman (spambuster_at_covad.net)
Date: 12/26/04 

Date: Sun, 26 Dec 2004 14:54:55 -0800

It seems to me I heard somewhere that James Annan wrote in article
<336ml8F3sv85bU1@individual.net>:

>Bart Mathias wrote:

>> Then yesterday I read a couple articles in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin
>> that reminded me that I have seen the same usage in the newspaper. "A
>> 26-year-old man was fatally stabbed yesterday in Waipahu, and the
>> suspect turned himself in to police afterward." "Police released a bank
>> surveillance photo of a man they say robbed robbed a Waipahu bank teller
>> and then wished her 'Merry Christmas.' The suspect, armed with a black
>> and silver handgun, robbed ..."

>> Can I hope this is just another case of Hawaiian English, or are there
>> other places where the semantic connection between the noun "suspect"
>> and the verb "suspect" has grown weak?

>While I agree it is sometimes clumsy (wrong), I suspect it is based on
>the idea that you should not state someone's guilt until convicted. So
>the first example isn't too wrong as it stands ("a suspect" might be
>better). The second is just silly...

It's prolly them $#^@$(* lawyers again, but clearly someone who holds a
gun on a clerk during a robbery is not merely suspected of something but
is a perpetrator, a criminal, a miscreant, whatever. A person the
police *think* is the Man With a Gun (wouldn't that make a good movie
title?) is a suspect (not a defendant until he's been formally charged
(and arraigned).

If someone turns himself in as a murderer it may be wise to let him play
a defendant until the police are convinced he's not offering them a
false confession. That happens often enough to be a worry for the
judicial system, but probably shouldn't trouble the language police.

I suspect the police themselves don't get hung up on these niceties
among themselves--they nail the perp and throw him into the tank. :-) 

-- 
Don
Old age is when you start saying "I wish I knew now what I knew then."

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