This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2545 Order in the Court.
Legal Terms for Everyday Connection.
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On today's episode, Aubrey and Michelle answer a listener question about legal terms.
Find out what they are, how to use them and why they are important for connecting with others.
Listen in today.
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Hello, Michelle.
How are you?
Hi, Aubrey.
I'm good.
How are you?
I'm good. great i have a question here for you did you used to play jail as a kid yes of course i think it's always like you're going to jail you're going to jail and and even my kids now it's always like and he's in jail i don't know i don't know why kids do that there was like one of the cop and they'd like arrest someone and take them to jail kid jail and they're just in there yeah Yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
It's so funny how kids play the strangest games.
So but today we are going to answer a listener question from Samet, who asked this question.
I may have been on YouTube.
I'm actually not sure.
But I'm going to read the question for us.
It says, Hey, I'm Samet.
And I've been listening to you for about a year from Istanbul, Turkey.
Um, so thank you for listening.
I'm a big fan of your podcast.
Oh, and you've become my best companion every morning while jogging.
Thank you so much so much for listening to us and enjoying the show.
We really appreciate it.
Yes.
And for the question, thank you everyone who sends us questions.
It's amazing to have these great questions to make good episodes.
And this is a really good one.
Aubrey and I had to really think through this one.
So He says, my question is this.
Could you please explain the difference between the words accuse, allege, charge, and indict?
Thank you.
This is a really good, very advanced question.
Yes, this is a great question.
Would be very easy for lawyers and people who are working in courtrooms all the time.
But for the average English speaker they might have a difficult time just spouting off these definitions.
So I'm excited to get into this today.
But I also want to give a quick shout out, Michelle.
Today in our community, one of our amazing students, Kimberly Gallant, told us that she checked her, Spotify wrapped and she's one of the top 1 of listeners.
She listened to All Ears English last year, 2,206 minutes.
That's almost 37 hours.
Oh my gosh.
Amazing.
And I know she's not the only one.
A lot of you out there have, you know, you are also in the top 1% of listeners.
You listen to All Ears English faithfully.
And we want to give you a shout out.
You and Kimberly.
Yes.
Amazing.
Thank you, Kimberly.
And to everyone who's listening, we truly appreciate it.
So this is a really great question.
So we're going to talk about these words and how they correlate to kind of the severity and the order which things happen.
Um, and we're going to talk through that.
Before we get to it though, make sure you hit follow wherever you're listening to the all ears English podcast.
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Lindsay will be back soon.
So Aubrey and I are just having a little fun recording together today.
Um, let's do it.
So first one accused, Yes.
So this is the first thing that would happen, right?
It's just to say that someone has done something bad.
This can be both in or out of a courtroom or a legal situation.
I could accuse you, Michelle, of being late or right.
It can be about very minor infractions or you can be accused of committing a crime.
Right, exactly.
So there's no real evidence at this point, right?
It's not There's nothing formal.
I mean, there could be evidence, but it's not like formal at this point.
Right.
Right.
Exactly.
So anyone could accuse anyone of anything just on a hunch, on a guess.
There's not necessarily evidence.
Aubrey, I accuse you of being too nice.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you'll be discharged.
That's kind of a fun expression we say.
If someone accuses you, say guilty as charged, meaning like yep, i'm guilty of that, i'll take it guilty.
Yes, exactly.
So here's an example.
He accused me of being rude to his mother.
So this is not for the courtroom, um right, but also how you might hear it exactly exactly.
Within relationships with couples, there are accusations often being thrown about right, Oh yeah.
Or the lawyer accused the suspect of tampering with the evidence.
So this is getting more serious, being accused of a crime.
Right, exactly.
So let's move on to allege.
So just to give you spelling, A-L-L-E-G-E.
So that's to say that someone committed some sort of crime or bad deed, we'll say.
But there's no official evidence yet right, it's kind of like you know aubrey, when you say innocent until proven guilty um where, where it's it's alleged we, we hear them talk about this on the news a lot like if you, if you're listening to the news, you'll hear all the time like oh, the alleged murderer will be appear in court on tuesday.
Um, so you might hear alleged or allegedly um, Right.
People use this a lot in the news on podcasts to protect themselves, because if there's if you accuse someone of doing something that they have not been convicted for, there's that there hasn't been proven.
You could be sued for libel or for, you know, ruining a reputation.
So if we always add that alleged or allegedly, then we're protecting ourselves and sharing like this has not been proven.
Right, exactly.
So another example could be, allegedly, he stole four diamond necklaces.
So it could be true, but it's not official.
And so you're protecting yourself by saying that.
But allegedly could also be used in more casual conversations.
Well, I mean, I guess this isn't quite so casually, but here's a little role play.
They're getting a divorce. allegedly, I'm not sure yet.
I use this a lot.
If someone says like, oh, Mike said he'll for sure be on time.
I'll say like, allegedly, kind of a way of saying like, we'll see.
I'll believe it when I see it.
That's funny.
That's really funny.
Okay, guys, we're going to go through the rest of these after the break.
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Okay, so yeah, we're really getting into these lawyer-type terms, these legal terms.
So the next one is indict.
Now, Aubrey, how in the world do you spell this?
Because it really seems silly to me.
Yeah, I can imagine people mispronouncing this because it is not spelled as it's pronounced.
It's spelled I-N-D-I-C-T, but that C is silent.
And it's almost as if there's an E at the end, indict.
And now we're getting into the terms that are more about legal proceedings, right?
The only time someone would be indicted, an indictment is dealing with the court.
Like we would never in casual conversations say we indicted someone or you know something like that.
It's all about courtroom proceedings.
Right, exactly.
This is getting official.
So you know, the prosecutor might say this um, I mean.
So basically, there is an indictment and then a charge which we'll get to.
So the prosecutor does the accusing and then at some point the jury says, OK, let's move forward.
There will be a case and they're being indicted.
Exactly.
So this is all about is there enough evidence to charge to if someone is indicted?
If now we're realizing okay, there is enough evidence to move forward.
Otherwise, it would stay at that accused phase, and it would never get to an indictment.
Right, exactly.
Things are moving forward, things are getting serious, and then leads us to charge.
So this is formal. when you are charged, it means that it's going toward a criminal case.
Right, Aubrey?
Exactly.
Right.
So, for example, this morning he was officially charged with embezzling funds from his company.
So this is where we're realizing there is enough evidence for a court case.
So someone is formally charged.
They, of course, are not yet convicted.
They are, at least in the United States, innocent until proven guilty.
But when you are charged, this definitely has this very serious implication that there was enough evidence to charge you.
Or here's another example.
There are no grounds to charge him at this time.
We need more evidence.
So it's not getting official.
We're kind of still building our case and seeing what can happen.
And then Aubrey, we wanted to add a final one for today.
What is that?
Yeah, so this is convict, right?
You are charged, which means being formally accused before you are convicted or found guilty.
And this is the verdict of a jury or a decision of a judge that is declaring someone guilty.
So, for example, the jury decided to convict the executive of fraud after reviewing financial records.
Yeah, exactly.
So I mean, as far as what you're going to hear the most in conversations, I would say alleged or allegedly accused.
And then charged and indicted, I think that's going to happen more on the TV, on the news.
What do you think?
Exactly.
True crime podcasts or line order.
That's where we hear these the most.
Unless you work in a courtroom and then you're hearing them all day, every day.
Yeah, exactly.
And if our listeners are like, well, I am not a lawyer.
This isn't important for me.
What would you say to them?
Because this is very important.
Yes.
I mean, you never know when you're going to end up needing to know the legal system and needing to understand the vocabulary.
You know, we hope that you're never in that situation, but you never know.
I've had friends who all of a sudden found themselves in court defending themselves, even if they weren't guilty and they didn't feel like there was evidence.
You just never know.
So it's important to know.
But also we use some of these words conversationally.
Like I was sharing that I'll say allegedly to be kind of funny about something, to be cheeky.
So some of these words we do use in casual conversation as well.
And like we said, when you listen to the news, constantly on the news is always about court cases.
So you're going to hear this.
It's just the more you learn, the better.
So maybe you're not going to use indict in your daily life all the time.
However, you might be sharing a story and trying to connect with someone over something going on the news.
So that's why this is also important for this connection skill, to be able to talk about these current events, because so much of current events deal with unfortunately, the law and court cases.
So it's good to have the vocabulary to connect with others over it.
Should we do a role play, Aubrey?
Yeah, let's do it.
Michelle and I are newscasters here talking about a criminal case.
Okay, here we go.
You have to put on your newscaster voice.
OK, I'll try.
All right.
When Foster was accused of the crime, most said they didn't believe he did it.
The alleged criminal had no criminal history, but now he has been indicted and is being charged with heading a massive Ponzi scheme.
More to come.
OK, and then we get off the air and then I just say to Aubrey, I think he might be convicted.
Oh, yeah.
Don't make sure that's not recorded, right?
Yeah, no hot mics there.
The things newscasters say to each other when they're off the air.
Their opinions of whether they think he did it or not.
Exactly.
All right.
So here we go.
So I said when Foster was accused of the crime, most said they didn't believe it.
So this is not really formal, right?
This is just kind of that first step.
He did this.
Exactly.
And this could be someone in the legal field accusing him.
It could also be his colleagues, his boss.
Right.
This is not formal.
Anyone could make an accusation.
And then I said the alleged criminal had no criminal history.
So this is that careful wording being used by newscasters commentators to say alleged meaning they are accused, but there is no evidence, there's no proof.
Innocent until proven guilty.
Exactly.
And then you said but now he has been indicted and is being charged with heading a massive Ponzi scheme.
So they found enough evidence, they're going to make it formal and then with the charge it's going to a criminal case.
Exactly.
And then off the air, you said, oh, I think he might be convicted.
So this means you think that there's enough evidence here that he probably did it and a jury or a court would find him guilty, would convict him.
Yes, exactly.
Oh, this was really interesting, Aubrey.
I think the two of us learned a lot as well.
But such a good question.
I love these really specific questions that get us thinking.
So very, very useful.
Guys, head on over to episode 2526.
That was Time Change Got You Down, How to Talk About It in English.
So takeaway for today, I would say, again, maybe law isn't your thing.
That's okay.
These things are going to come up.
Maybe you're not going to tell your coworker that you're indicting him, but maybe you're going to tell your coworker about a story on the news or you're listening to what people are talking about in current events.
This is so important.
So learning about a popular topic that may or may not, maybe it is in your interest, Maybe it's not, but still learning about it, is going to be so important for you to be able to make these connections in English.
So definitely take these seriously and give them a try.
At least listen for them.
Absolutely.
This makes for such interesting conversation.
Whether you were listening to a true crime podcast or you were watching the news and saw someone be accused or charged.
This is an interesting thing to talk about.
It will come up.
So now you have the vocabulary straight so that you can jump in in those conversations.
Awesome.
All right, Aubrey.
Well, thanks for talking about this with me today.
And thank you again, Samet, for the wonderful question.
Keep them coming.
Yes.
Awesome.
See you next time.
All right.
Bye.
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