First up, I suspect that the readers of Weer’d World aren’t representative of the general population, still I thought I’d get your opinions of this issue in American Law.
So we’ve all heard now about the “Terrorist” in New York who attempted to detonate a fake bomb supplied by an FBI plant. I’m not impressed by these stories as it appears to be law enforcement manufacturing a crime, and therefore hand-building a criminal.
Still, I thought I’d post a little more despicable, yet common case we read about all the time.
This is the case where the grown man is chatting with an “underage girl”. He flirts, gets sexy, then arranges a meeting. He arrives with sexual gear in tow, only to find his underage hookup is a grown male police officer.
Now Child predators are MONSTERS, and I honestly do wish the law was a little more lenient in shooting these bastards, because even tho an aware adult will scare them away, they’re still a predator in the wild, and I see them as no different as a coyote or a bear snooping around a populated area…they aren’t a problem NOW, but they are a FUTURE problem.
Still with these cases, like the “terrorists”, its a shadow of a serious crime….but there is no ACTUAL crime. He’s flirting and arranging a tryst with a grown adult. Does because he THINKS its an underage girl, or THINKS the bomb is real constitute a crime?
Also if there was no cop or FBI agent phishing for a “criminal”, would there ever be a crime then, or in the future?
For further discussion, I’ve known many people who have drank illegally at bars with a fake ID, or with a sibling’s ID that looked close enough to them as bad license photos go. The Bartender THINKS the person is legal, so they serve them. Are they breaking the law?
What say you, readers?
Even worse: If you believe that the girl you are with is underage, it is a crime to attempt to have sex with her. If you believe that the girl is of legal age, you cannot use that as a defense if it turns out that she is not. Here is an example:
http://street-pharmacy.blogspot.com/2011/04/like-crane-technique-there-is-no.html
I have known a few guys over the years that actually do these kinds of stings for various police agencies. From what I understand, the guys that get arrested almost always admit to having contacted other people online that they thought were underage. Many of the cases have documentation where the officers record that the person was actively searching out underage girls.
Remember, terrorism is a choice, sexual attraction to minors is a compulsion… I think there is a big difference.
Good point about the compulsion. I must say as I get older, the older the girls I consider “Jail Bait” to be. Of course as a teen I’d chase anything pubescent, then as a young adult it was 18 or bust, nowadays anybody who can’t legally buy beer is WAYYYY too young, and I have a tendency to call anybody under 25 “Sport”.
This is why I didn’t just stick to the “Terrorist” story, and went for the more egregious child predators.
ChrisM’s comment about compulsion is a good point, but giving in to it is also a choice, albeit a VERY hard one for some people to make correctly.
This is a tough one to pin down a position on. On one hand, the person honestly believes they are doing something (or attempting to do something) they know is illegal and/or harmful to others. On the other hand, there’s no real danger to their intended target, or their perceived target isn’t what they think it is; “no victim, no crime,” as it were.
And on the gripping hand (as Linoge puts it), there’s always the question of whether the “perpetrator” would be in that position without the authorities holding the proverbial carrot in front of his/her nose and prodding him/her in the @ss.
Hypothetical counter question: If Romney wins and you meet up with one of the idiots on Twitter who say they want to kill him, and you hand this person a “sniper weapon” that YOU KNOW (and the other person doesn’t know) is full of blanks, and he/she tries to take a shot, is he/she guilty of murder? And are you guilty of facilitating it?
I think the biggest difference is the original impetus. And thats a big portion of entrapment, as well. Without transcripts of the terrorist plot, its difficult to say whether the subject was an active threat. I’ve not been aware of peopke having that kind of records access. OTOH, pedophile stings are much more likely to have electronic records. If he initiated the sexual contact with a person he knew to be a minor, he broke the law, and broke some pretty serious moral codes as well. I believe the term is mens rea (help, I dont speak latin, please correct) or guilty mind. Whether or not the minor was real or ficticious is immaterial. He knew what he was about to do, and knew it was both wrong and illegal, and proceeded anyway. So, yeah, get’im. Coming back to the terrorist, the hangup is murkier. If he was convinced or coerced into commitimg the act by Law Enforcement, I dont think he should be held liable. However, the only people that have that information are the officers, and I doubt they are likely to admit it.
Honestly, I do not give a sh!t about these criminals … either the pedos or terrorists.
They said or did something that got the attention of LEOs. LEOs sprinkled sugar on top. Perp licked the ice cream AND took active steps towards completion of the crime.
F**K ’em. Lock ’em up, throw away the key, et f**kin’ cetera …
Good points. Sometimes its good to step back and note that it is VERY easy to simply say “fuckoff” when a 14 year old girl is looking for a hookup (or otherwise) or a “Terror Cell” wants me to run their bomb for them…
I don’t think we have enough information to make a judgement about any of these cases.
Was it the cop/FBI agent who sought out the “perpetrator”, planted the seed in his mind, and basically incited him to the crime? Or did the perpetrator make all the moves and the LEO just played along to give him enough rope to hang himself?
I think that makes a big difference and those are the kinds of details your never going to get out of a news report. We’d actually have to be on the jury to get the kind of information we need to truly make an informed determination about it.
“Was it the cop/FBI agent who sought out the “perpetrator”, planted the seed in his mind, and basically incited him to the crime? Or did the perpetrator make all the moves and the LEO just played along to give him enough rope to hang himself?”
Well, given their history (Randy Weaver, anyone?), I find the former entirely plausible.
first, i keep hearing the word “entrapment” used incorrectly in several corners of the interwebs. entrapment is when law enforcement entices a person who is committing no crime, and has no intention to do so, into committing one. nothing of the sort happened in this case.
second, our traveling Paki only arrived in this country in January and immediately began shaking the internet tree to find folks to help him do some jihad. if one types words like ‘terrorism’, ‘jihad’ or ‘bombing’ often enough one can be assured that one’s traffic will be monitored by *someone*. he came to LE’s notice because of his rantings, much like a nut on the street sceaming, and LE did not go looking for him. this is more than covered by the veil of probable cause. do a google search of news stories on this incident and read some of his posts and you’ll agree he needed to be monitored too.
third, he asked for assistance for making a bomb to attack specific targets. this sort of specificity indicates intent and is the basis of any criminal case.
fourth, all he needed was a tool. he picked the target, did the planning and almost all the talking on this project. all LE did was provide him with a dummy bomb and a buddy to be in the hotel room with him to slap the cuffs on. if they hadn’t been able to control his acquisition of a ‘device’ there is a chance he could have gotten one, or made one, (remember, the Times Square attempted bombing was a home made device) and LE’s apprehension of him would have been much more difficult.
also think on this: what if this guy comes here and starts shaking the internet tree for fellow terrorists and LE had NOT tried to control his efforts, NOT placed an informant in his organization and NOT tried to give him an inert device but simply watched him passively? what then?
The key point, at least in my mind, is that both the pedophile and the terrorist followed through on their actions. The pedophile arranged and showed up for a sexual encounter with a minor, and the terrorist assembled and placed a bomb with the stated intent of detonating it. They could both say “no” at any point in the process before that and avoid prosecution. Another critical point is that one can only fairly judge another based on what that person actually knew (or reasonably should have known), at the time. Both the pedophile and the terrorist “knew” that they were committing evil and illegal acts, even if their knowledge was wrong.
The key difference, to me, is that the police are generally far more “passive” when hunting pedophiles – they present themselves as minors and let the pedophiles take the active role and approach them, removing the question of entrapment – whereas they seem to be actively attempting to approach people they believe are potential terrorists and encourage them to commit atrocities. Would these terrorists ever have gone beyond talk without this outside encouragement?
But then, again, we come back to the idea that they could have stopped at any time. They followed through and committed an act fully intended to result in multiple deaths/etc., and the only reason it failed is that their trust was misplaced.
How can one take an entirely passive role in searching for pedophiles on the internet?
Seriously, how?
In order for the authorities to “catch” a pedophile in such a sting, the officer(s) need to ACTIVELY impersonate a minor. This means pretending to BE a minor, and actively seeking out a liaison with the alleged child predator.
I don’t see how it’s possible to be entirely passive in such a situation, and thus I have a hard time agreeing that prosecutions resulting from such contact are spurious.
In the interest of extending Constitutional protections to the worst of society lest they eventually be stripped from everyone, here’s one more thought on the “pedo” situation. The “perpetrator” contacts what he believes to be a minor online, arranges a meeting, and shows up. At that point, he is arrested and charged. BUT, at the point he is arrested, HE HAS NOT COMMITTED A CRIME. He still has PLENTY of opportunity to say “No thanks” and walk out, no crime having been committed (other than possibly trespassing).
Admittedly, by the time he shows up at the house, the odds of him walking out are slim-to-none, but unless the “Department of Pre-Crime” is up and running without us knowing about it, the purpose of the justice system is to punish offenders. Punishing someone before they’ve actually committed an offense crosses into dangerous territory, liberty-wise (and may invoke the whole “double jeopardy” thing).
Another (non-pedo) example: someone gets caught with 5 oz. of marijuana, and is charged with possession with intent to distribute, which (around here, anyway) is a MUCH more serious crime than simple possession. But what if there IS no intent to distribute, and he’s just stocking up for his own personal use?
Or another example: how many guns or rounds of ammunition is too many to be for “personal use”? 10,000? 6,000, like the Aurora guy? 1,000? 100? 50? At what point do you have too much for yourself, so automatically it’s assumed you’re GOING to try to kill a lot of people? At what point do you have too much to claim the 2nd Amendment protections?
As far as pedophiles, I don’t approve of what these scumbags do, and generally consider them some of the worst scumbags around, often causing untold long-lasting physical and emotional damage to young people. Thinking about my daughter encountering one of them takes me to a VERY dark place in my mind. (Incidentally, I also don’t condone the use of marijuana for anything but medicinal purposes, and I’m mostly OK with limits on how much a person can have “legally”.) But when “justice” starts consisting of punishing someone for a crime they think a person MIGHT commit, no matter how probable, then we’ve taken a hard left turn toward a police state. Like it or not, up until conviction, the scumbag has the same rights as everyone else. The other option is that NONE of us has any rights.
I hate to think of the moral dilemma the public defender goes through with these cretins.
Just my $0.0263 (adjusted for inflation, and my apologies for the rant!).
I don’t want to see the government start a plot, however false it is. If an agent of the Feds or the prosecutor goes out offering to help commit a crime, that’s a problem. On the other hand, if said agent just hangs out in a discussion board and picks up on what a would-be criminal is looking for, that’s fine.
It’s like carrying a gun. We’re not authorized to start something, but we have a right to bring to a satisfactory conclusion what someone else sets in motion.
This.
It’s like arresting a guy for possession and/or use of marijuana when you sold him oregano.
The fact that he thought it was marijuana is immaterial; it wasn’t, therefore no crime occurred.