"If you want to think of it in legal terms, it would be that a person has to be put upon notice of what the crime is," Koos said. "And in this case, it's knowingly to use someone else's identity. My client didn't know he had someone else's Social Security number, he just had a number."
Koos lost the case on appeal, and his immigrant client is now serving five years in federal prison.
But Koos' argument has been backed by other appeals courts — and he thinks the Supreme Court may need to resolve the dispute.
The issue is coming up more often because of another part of the Bush administration's immigration crackdown. More and more companies are using a federal computer program that can detect fake Social Security numbers. But it can't tell when real numbers are used by another person — which has fueled a growing market for stolen IDs.
"The issue is whether people using false identifications should be held accountable for that," said Bob Teig, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in northern Iowa, which prosecuted the Agriprocessors case.
Immigrant Rights Groups Challenge ID Theft Arrests : NPR
The insanity continues . . . .
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