"Person of interest"

Question

I've been hearing the term "person of interest" on a lot of legal oriented shows describing a suspect. Is this some kind of PC lingo for "suspect", or some new category? Did some "suspects" threaten to sue for character defamation or something?
Larry

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]I've been hearing the term "person of interest" on a lot of legal oriented shows describing a suspect. Is this some kind of PC lingo for "suspect",or some new category? Did some "suspects" threaten to sue for character defamation or something?[/nq]
More or less. This is a new(ish) item of police
jargon for a suspect. A current judicial inquiry is looking into the deportation of Canadian citizen
Maher Arar, arrested in transit by US authorities
and sent to his birthplace Syria, where he was
tortured for a year before repatriation to Canada. He was never actually charged with any terrorist
crime (membership of a network etc.) He was a
"person of interest" to the intelligence authorities of at least three countries (and incompetently
defended by Canadian diplomacy and bureaucracy,
hence the inquiry.

Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

Usenet · Answer

Larry G.:
[nq:2]I've been hearing the term "person of interest" on a ... of PC lingo for "suspect", or some new category? ...[/nq]
Don Phillipson:
[nq:1]More or less. This is a new(ish) item of police jargon for a suspect.[/nq]
Mmm, I wonder. A suspect is suspected of having done* something illegal, right? "Person of interest" sounds more general; in particular, it could include someone suspected of *planning to do something illegal.

(Or if it's an intelligence agency that the person is "of interest" to, rather than police, then for "do something illegal", read "act against the interests of the agency's country".)
Incidentally, my first draft of this message had "being going to do" in the third non-quoted sentence. Not one of the more common inflected forms of that idiom...

Mark Brader, Toronto > "This is a film of non-stop action (Email Removed) > and non-start intelligence." Mark Leeper

My text in this article is in the public domain.

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I've been hearing the term "person of interest" on a lot of legal oriented shows describing a suspect. Is this some kind of PC lingo for "suspect", or some new category? Did some "suspects" threaten to sue for character defamation or something?[/nq]
There was a recent case of multiple murders in which a man was identified as a "person of interest" because he was known to have attended a party at the site of the murders earlier on the day of the murders. It was stressed that he was not a suspect. I figured, then, that "person of interest" did not refer primarily to suspects.

I did a Google search for
"person of interest" "not a suspect"
See
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22person+of+interest%22+%22not+a+suspect%22&btnG=Search

or
http://tinyurl.com/bfwgq\
It looks like the expression has been much discussed on the Internet.

Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I've been hearing the term "person of interest" on a lot of legal oriented shows describing a suspect. Is this some kind of PC lingo for "suspect", or some new category? Did some "suspects" threaten to sue for character defamation or something?[/nq]
In the U.K. there has long been a distinction between somebody identified by the Police as a "suspect" and somebody who is merely "helping the Police with their inquiries". The latter is frequently promoted to the former as further evidence is accumulated.
Similarly, there is a distinction in many systems between a) detained
b) arrested
c) arraigned
d) charged
The first two of these are fairly clear in my mind, but the formal distinction between the last two escapes me.

I am also not clear in the U.K. environment what the motive or reasoning is behind when a person is found guilty, they sometimes ask "... for further offences to be taken into consideration...". There must be some advantage to be had for a perp to 'fess up to other as yet undiscovered sins.

Is it perhaps to pre-empt them from surfacing later and triggering a subsequent trial with subsequent additional penalties?

Jitze

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I am also not clear in the U.K. environment what the motive or reasoning is behind when a person is ... undiscovered sins. Is it perhaps to pre-empt them from surfacing later and triggering a subsequent trial with subsequent additional penalties?[/nq]
Precisely.

Alec McKenzie

Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]I am also not clear in the U.K. environment what ... later and triggering a subsequent trial with subsequent additional penalties?[/nq]
[nq:1]Precisely.[/nq]
It saves the cost to the public purse of investigating and prosecuting the "further offences" to which the accused has confessed. Judging by court reports in the newspapers, I assume that the further offences must be of a similar nature or closely related to the one originally charged, and I think this procedure is used only when the accused has pleaded guilty to that charge - not when "found" guilty as Jitze puts it. But someone in England & Wales or Scotland may know better. (For law, there isn't a single "U.K. environment" - two distinct systems.)
Alan Jones

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I am also not clear in the U.K. environment what the motive or reasoning is behind when a person is ... undiscovered sins. Is it perhaps to pre-empt them from surfacing later and triggering a subsequent trial with subsequent additional penalties?[/nq]
You got it.

Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7734/stevesig.htm
E-mail - see web page, or parse: shayes at dunelm full stop org full stop uk

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]I've been hearing the term "person of interest" on a lot of legal oriented shows describing a suspect. Is this some kind of PC lingo for "suspect", or some new category? Did some "suspects" threaten to sue for character defamation or something?[/nq]
You really could've seen something happen, and therefore be a person of interest to the police, but not a suspect in the actual doings of the criminal act.

"What do you value in your bulldogs? Gripping, is it not? It's their nature? It's why you breed them? It's so with men. I will not give in because I oppose it. Not my pride, not my spleen, nor any other of my appetites, but *I* do. Is there in the midst of all this muscle no single sinew that serves no appetite of Norfolk's but is just Norfolk? Give that some exercise. Because, as you stand, you'll go before your Maker ill-conditioned. He'll think that somewhere along your pedigree, a *** got over the wall."
-, "A Man For All Seasons"

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