Summary:
New York police officer Gilberto Valle has been convicted of conspiring to kill and eat women. He now faces a potential life sentence though nobody was killed or eaten. Emails the FBI termed “fantasy role-play” in which he discussed with anonymous third parties on the “Dark Fetish Network” his detailed, sexualized fantasies about killing and eating a woman, Kimberly Sauer, are the primary evidence against him. Advised by Assistant U.S Attorney Randall Jackson that Valle’s “porn” was “not normal”, the jury found cause to convict him of conspiracy.
So this guy could go to prison for life because he’s got a really disturbing fetish. The Debate…
You couldn’t reasonably expect law enforcement officials to simply ignore this guy, knowing he has an apparently specific plan to murder someone and the means to do it. And the justice system ought to be able to avert a crime like this if someone is obviously in danger; you can’t just wait for someone to get murdered before you file charges. That said, there are a lot of people out there on the internet who fetishize some really weird stuff (like eating people) and it seems wrong to throw them before a vanilla jury who will convict them for simply for being outside community standards oF sexuality. If it isn’t clear: I’m asserting that Valle was convicted for freaking the jurors out with his kink.
The FBI and the prosecutors seemed to recognize this guy a pervert first and a potential murderer second, but they prosecuted him anyway and relied on the revulsion of the jurors to carry the day. And it worked like a charm. If this sticks, why stop there? Why not prosecute people who discuss elaborate rape fantasies in the dark, fetishy corners of the internet? Why not charge people who fantasize about whipping their spouses with conspiracy to commit assault?
If that sounds like a slippery slope to you, think about why a sexual fantasy that involves eating another person is so much more upsetting to you than one that involves beating or choking another person. And if you think people should generally be free to fantasize about whatever lurks in the back of their mind but that Valle stepped over a line here, be clear about where that line is and what it looks like.
It goes a bit beyond fantasy role play. He was collecting information about actual women, and apparently used his police power to collect information about them. Whether he intended to carry out his plans, I guess we’ll never know.
Making detailed plans to do harm to a specific actual person using information derived from one’s access to confidential personal information databases strikes me as a pretty good “bright line” not to cross.
So - writing wierd porn about eating people = you are disturbing but legal.
Writing wierd porn that contains a detailed plan to eat a particular person, using data illegally obtained = not okay, because indistinguishable from an actual conspiracy to commit a crime.
Everything I’ve read, which is not a lot by any means, show this isn’t true at all. The officers and the prosecutors have been more than clear that they believe he was a potential serial killer, that he was a great risk to people, and that he took specific actions to conspire with people to kidnap specific women. That’s kinda why the prosecuted.
So the prosecution says it was real, the defense says it was just fantasy. Who to believe?
Well, that’s why we have trials. And the prosecution presented its evidence that it wasn’t just “fantasy role play”, it was a real conspiracy to kidnap a woman. Then, the defense got to present evidence, and argue, that it was just some kind of dark fetish. And the jury made its decision after hearing that evidence. Of course you could just hand wave the jury’s finding as “they hate fetish porn”, but it might be better to actually deal with the evidence the jury saw and heard rather than simply dismiss it.
Personally, I’m not inclined to spend a few weeks listening to evidence or two days deliberating over the evidence I did here to make a final decision. But we should at least acknowledge that there was evidence presented.
That seems reasonable. I guess the question is whether or not there is a way to distinguish between a fantasy that involves a realistic plan to commit a crime or a straight forward realistic plan to commit a crime. It seems like the only way to draw a distinction would be to understand the context of the plan which, in this case, seems pretty clear based on the FBI’s characterization of his emails.
It’s entirely possible he was just abusing the information at his fingertips because of his job to flesh out his fantasy to thrill his online buddies but, as Larry Borgia says, we’ll never know.
It’s part of the same overall fact pattern. Illegal database access makes his plan look less like perverse fantasy and more like a real conspiracy.
Look at it this way - there is obviously a spectrum of actions involved; the more actions are apparently targeted towards the goal of actually committing a crime, the more likely it is that they will be convicted.
Some of those actions may be, in and of themselves, offences. This does not detract from the point; rather, it adds to it.
For example - the purchase of burglary gear may in and of itself be a chargable offence; yet had he purchased the gear, it would make his conviction the more certain on the conspiracy to commit count.
I wasn’t in the court room but I did offer in the OP quotes from the FBI and the U.S. Attorney which you could read that might make it indeed seem true. I didn’t quote the defense attorney for a reason.
Not to be argumentative, but do you really find it so hard to believe that the guy was convicted for sexualizing two of humanity’s greatest taboos at the same time just as much as he was convicted on the merits of the arguments involved?
Let’s say that Valle’s plans all involved an anonymous blond woman. In all his postings, rather than saying “Kimberly Sauer” he referred to this unknown woman who might be somewhere near where he lived. Still guilty? Why or why not?
The OP didn’t have quotes, just some out of context words thrown in the middle of your opinions. Every article I read on the case included prosecutors saying, over and over, that this wasn’t just a fantasy, it wasn’t just a fetish, that it was, in fact, a conspiracy with actions taken in furtherance thereof.
When they conduct an entire trial and the jury finds that, beyond a reasonable doubt, a crime was committed, then I tend to presume that finding is based on the evidence. Now, if you have some compelling evidence to add to make me think that the prosecutors, judge, and jury decided to forget their ethics and oaths and convict on personal feelings, by all means, present it. Because you haven’t offered much of it yet.
You really needn’t be so testy. I’m not here to re-prosecute the trial; I’m trying to feel out why he was convicted. I’m not here to subvert our legal system or suggest that conspiring to eat people is a noble endeavor.
You are, of course, aware that jury trials are not infallible and that verdicts are often overturned later, right? There’s no point in pretending that the jury always gets the right answer.
Jury thought that he took actual steps to implement his criminal plan. So they voted guilty. The appellate courts are probably the next step to determine if these “overt acts” were in fact enough. The illegal database access might be enough.
You weren’t “trying to feel out why he was convicted”, hell, you reached your conclusion on that in the damn title of the thread and in the OP. And your OP didn’t even attempt to offer both sides. Hell, you went so far as to misstate the position of the prosecutors to try and conclude that even they thought it was just a fantasy.
Of course not. And if you have any evidence to show how the jury was wrong, beyond just concluding it, by all means, do share.
Dude. I didn’t “bring the dog bowling.” The dog’s not going to take your turn. I didn’t buy the dog a beer. Get over yourself. OPs have to be a little contentious just to get noticed around here and you are reading a whole heck of a lot into my intentions for someone who objects to such behavior.
Much harder to convict. I don’t know if there’s a legal mechanism to convict someone of attempted murder of a person unknown. It would be difficult to prove he took actual steps to commit a crime in that circumstance. But I could see a jury convicting him just as easily out for fear and disgust.
I think the police and prosecution failed by not setting up a sting for this case as they do with attempts to hire a hitman. This guy might end up getting released on appeal some day because the evidence is to some degree inconclusive in this case. We have no positive assertions of his intent in a circumstance that is not open to the question of fantasy (although I don’t know the details of all the evidence). They really needed to place him in physical proximity to this woman (or a decoy) to lock this down.
We also have here another case where I won’t lose any sleep over any injustice done.
The details as reported in the linked article have me leaning toward feeling that this guy committed some crimes and is a sicko, but I question the conspiracy charge and conviction. There isn’t much information to work with though. Maybe some more folks can chime in. Does conspiracy require actions by more than one person? Some folks he communicated with were described as co-conspirators, but I missed where the nature of that conspiracy was described.