The TV show Cops occasionally will have a perps face pixallated, but I have never seen Dateline do this.
Ok. Lets look at a typical Dateline case.
Dude gets involved in internet chat with a person identifying themselves as a young teen. The chat gets explicit. A “date” is set for a face to face meet.
Dude shows up at the appropriate time and place, bearing beer and condoms.
He stands outside, hears a young voice inviting him inside the house. Dude walks to kitchen, and in walks Hansen to confront him with the chat logs.
A lot of the clips that Dateline shows, the dude admits to thinking he was conversing with a teen. (Hansen asks him his screen name, asks him if he remembers talking to the “baits” screenname, asks him how old he thought the “bait” was.) The suspects admit to the language used, and the subject matter. A lot of the suspects admit that they intended to have sex with the “bait”.
They show a few clips were the dude says he wouldn’t go through with it, that they were going to warn the “bait” about the dangers, and so on.
Now, if Dateline actually had a young teen in the room for the suspect to grab, I am sure there would be all kinds of howling about putting a minor in a dangerous spot. I don’t think the actual presence of a child is needed here.
Analogy: Suspect walks up to cop standing on street corner. Suspect asks cop for drugs. Cop shows suspect a baggie of Sweet-and-Low, exchange is made. Charge: Intent/Attempted to buy a controlled substance. (Even though no drugs actually changed hands.) The suspect cannot use “But I did not actually get any drugs!”
I’m glad we agree on that.
If I were a defense attorney, I’d want to see the full chain of custody on who had possession of the tape, and if there isn’t one, well, tape can be edited too, and since most TV tape is now edited digitally, it can be done quickly and seamlessly. Hell, at this exact moment, I’m editing some audio on my laptop, and virtually all of the edits I’m making are seamless.
Personally, I think Hansen is someone who needs to be sent back to the minors. I put him in the same league with Marty Griffin, a local reporter in Pittsburgh who has had his own set of problems. But you’d be surprised what people will confess to, especially to a reporter who makes himself out to be a father-confessor. You don’t have to be Catholic for that to happen.
And that’s why Collin County DA John Roach declined to prosecute.
But can you tell criminal guilt from psychological guilt or shame? I can’t, and I’ve also got experience as an average human with body language.
Fortunately, the Collin County district attorney agrees with you, which is why he’s not bringing any of this to trial.
Thank you.
I’d agree with you, if these men were defendants. But they’re not because the local DA has declined to bring any of them to trial. I think that’s the right thing to do, regardless of the men’s motives.
Robin
But the suspect actually handed over money and took a bag of what he thought was drugs. In this case he actually, physically engaged in an action that constitutes an attempt to commit a crime. I don’t think your analogy is sound unless you can actually get the guy into a room with a 13-year-old girl and have him physically try to have sex with her.
Which, as you point out, you simply can’t do. Maybe this is a crime you can’t trap people into committing. It seems to me there’s lesser crimes you could convict someone of, though.
Then you missed your true calling. (Joking)
I understand that video technology is advancing rapidly. But “Seamless”? Not even Lord of the Rings was seamless…
The prosecution puts up their evidence. Their expert attests to its authenticity. The defense expert counters. OJ trial redux. Ugh. Hopefully, it will be made understandable for us nonexpert jurors.
Are you sure that there is no “chain of custody”? What if the police forged the “chain of custody”? This could go on ad nuesem.
We aren’t talking about someone picked up in a sweep of a city park. This is a dude walking into a strange house…
Does this make the “confession” any less possible? Anybody who talks to Hansen or Jeraldo Rivera gets that confession thorwn out because you dont like that reporter? Who do you like? Lou Dobbs?
“Psycological guilt”? For showing up at a strange house thinking there is a minor there? I don’t follow… “Shame” manifesting as a leer? Hmm. I have to think about that…
If the defense can put up a convincing argument about a particular facial expression or action, as seen on the video, I say “good for them!”. I am truly willing to listen (at trial).
Okeedokee. I can understand your argument, I think. (Which I take to be “Leave Law enforcement to the professionals.”) If the DA doesn’t want to use whatever “evidence” Dateline and the Police/Sheriff brings to him, that’s his call.
OT: What about evidence collected by Private Investigators? Do you feel it is also unworthy and tainted, and should be tossed?
Plenty of Dateline cases have made it to court… So some DA’s agree with me, too. 
The obligatory T-shirt
Just out of curiosity, what is your opinion of licking Cool Whip off a cat’s ass if you’re an adult? 
[Sideshow Bob] Whoever heard of a Nobel Prize for “Attempted Chemistry?” [/SB]
There’s a good deal about these shows that are wrong. First of all, I seriously doubt that the evidentiary chain the network is using is as rigorously controlled as that of the police. Remember the OJ trial? You had professional cops with what should have been a slam dunk case, but as came out in the trial, some of the evidence was mishandled by the police. If individuals trained how to handle evidence manage to screw it up, what makes us think that a group of amateurs will be able to do a better job? How do we know that the original “hook up” isn’t of the “teen” saying, that they always had a fantasy about being seduced by an older man when they were a kid, and they wanted the “perp” to help them live that out, now that they’re older? Some people get pretty intense in their role playing and can actually blend it into their day-to-day activities. Heck, how do we know that the cops doing the takedowns on the show are actually cops? If a TV show is willing to go to extreme lengths to make “good TV,” then everything they air is suspect. A little “creative editing” can make even some of the most innocent things look bad.
I still think it’s wrong, mostly because the poor cat has little recourse to the raping it’s going to receive. :eek:
This is an incorrect statement of the law of attempt. Attempt, the exact terms of which may vary by jurisdiction, is defined in New York in Penal Law Sec. 110.00:
A person is guilty of an attempt to commit a crime when, with intent to commit a crime, he engages in conduct which tends to effect the commission of such crime.Essentially, the two elements of Attempt are intent to commit a crime and conduct toward committing that crime. For instance, for attempted murder, you don’t have to pull a trigger. Instead, if you intend to kill someone, just buying a gun would be enough to complete the crime of Attempted Murder. Alternatively, you could be guilty of Attempted Murder if, with intent to commit murder, you get in your car and begin to drive to where your victim can be located. Likewise, if you were caught lurking armed with intent to rob, that would be Attempted Robbery, even before your intended victim showed up.
Note that Penal Law Sec. 110.10:
If the conduct in which a person engages otherwise constitutes an attempt to commit a crime pursuant to section 110.00, it is no defense to a prosecution for such attempt that the crime charged to have been attempted was, under the attendant circumstances, factually or legally impossible of commission, if such crime could have been committed had the attendant circumstances been as such person believed them to be.This means that if a person can be shown to have the intent to commit sex with a minor (or whatever the particular crime is termed in the relevant jurisdiction, select from this list for New York depending on what the creep intended to do), and that person takes any action toward commiting the crime – driving to the intended underage person’s purported home would count – there is the complete crime of Attempted [sex offense].
Plus, isn’t Cool Whip really high in hydrogenated fats? I make my own whipped cream, but even Reddi-Whip is a better choice. I don’t have a cat though
Or “have some sweet tea!”. I don’t know why that cracks me up everytime. It just does. That is clearly the code. I bet the second the guy hears that, his heart sinks into his gut.
Also, a number of states have amended their Codes so that this set of behaviors IS a felony in and of its own self. * “Think of the CHIIIILLDREEEENNNN!!!” * echoes loudly in legislative halls…
Still, it’s pretty apparent that PervJust feels that any ill that befalls these men is vastly and richly deserved, and Hansen and his producers feel it’s great sensationalist TV. AND that in SOME states the DA is fine with this. I would not be surprised if the hesitant DA referred to in the OP becomes the target of some major vilification as a pedo-enabler at PJ’s homepage, they are pretty uncompromising about their position.
Back in the day, “watch out for skeevy older men who’ll flatter you and ply you with gifts” * was one of those things that Mama was supposed to warn a girl about as she prepared her for future womanhood (OK, so some Mamas added: “make sure the gifts can be resold for a profit, if you’re gonna put out” but hey, nobody said it was a perfect * world back in the day…). But it IS a good thing that it’s no longer a question of merely “let the maiden beware”, transferring the whole burden on the potential victim (or as Cervantes once had one of his characters say: “if you had defended your honor like you would defend your purse, Hercules himself could not have shamed you” ) – there are too many scuzzes out there who are just on the prowl for easy prey and they should be made to pause and think before they badly damage some young personality. BUT at the same time, as mentioned before, scuzzes DO have rights.
My main trouble with something like TCaP, besides the utter stupidity of the losers (Who the hell still thinks this is a scenario likely to turn out for the good? ), is that, well… we did away with putting people in the stocks in the public square; AND we did away with having hangings in front of the courthouse for a picnic crowd… and the success of TCaP seems to prove that a large segment of the public **misses ** that. And that can’t be good.
I don’t know how to read “conduct” and “tends” in the section of code you quoted. How do we individuate conduct? For example, when it comes to driving the car to go to an intended victim’s house, do we describe this, legally, as “Driving a vehicle,” or rather as “Driving a vehicle with the intention of arriving at the house of some particular person, in order to shoot them?” Or do we read it some other way besides these?
I ask because if we describe the conduct in the first way I mentioned, then it doesn’t apparently (to me) “tend” to effect the commission of a crime. The conduct as described in the second way, though, does “tend” to effect the commission of a crime.
-FrL-
Am I recalling incorrectly that a couple of times, the guy would show up and park near the house, but not come in, or drive by a few times (having second thoughts obviously), and they sent the girl to the door to coax the suspect inside?
Seamless or not, it’s pretty damn close. In the hands of a skillful enough editor, such as the kind you find at television networks, tape can be manipulated in any way you can imagine, from insertion of CG effects to alteration of the soundtrack to just simply deleting whole scenes or adding new material. This is, after all, what TV does. For example, Barbara Walters interviews people for the whole day, then chooses which segments go into the final show. You didn’t think she’d travel cross-country to interview John Travolta for just an hour or two, did you?
Which would work for police-obtained video, but the Dateline video was shot by NBC crews and is owned by NBC. I know that most production departments are anal beyond belief about logging and controlling their footage, but how can we be sure that the tape that is viewed in court is the same as the raw footage that the crew shot? Now do you see what I mean?
If the intent is to have sex that you don’t want to admit to publicly, what difference does it make?
Actually, I don’t like Lou Dobbs; I think he’s a pompous blowhard. What I meant by “confessor” was a reporter who comes across to his interview subject as compassionate and sympathetic to elicit the desired response. And, for the record, admitting something to a reporter on-camera isn’t the same as legally confessing to something; I doubt such an admission would be admissible as such.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean here. “Guilt” in the legal sense means that someone has been found responsible for a crime. “Guilt” in the psychological sense means that someone feels bad for something, whether they actually did it or not.
If it gets that far, which these cases didn’t because of tainted evidence.
Yup, and in this case, the system worked. The reason rules about evidence exist is to keep it from being manipulated. Yeah, these rules sometimes give prosecutors and police heartburn, but they’re also there to protect the accused.
In most jurisdictions, private investigators have to be trained and licensed, and many are retired or former police officers who have been trained in the proper obtaining of evidence. In any event, some of the information that a PI might gather will never see the inside of a courtroom, not because of any sort of procedural issues, but because that information was never intended to be used in any legal proceeding.
Do you have a cite for this? The Google searches I’ve done have all pointed to the Collin County DA’s decision not to prosecute.
Robin
From the Boston Herald article:
So, what we have here is thought crimes?
No, because thought isn’t the only element of the crime; the mere wanting to kill someone (i.e. the thought) doesn’t become a crime until you start to take action. Likewise, the mere wanting to diddle kiddies (again, the intention part) isn’t a crime until you put it into action.
I don’t see how that’s different from almost any other crime; there’s almost always an element of intent, and it bears on the crime and the penalty.
Well considering the cops involved have maybe arrested a person or two and maybe collected some evidence…
It would be a very simple matter for the police to pull all tapes of each bust immediately after the bust and return them after making copies themselves or returning the copies while holding the originals. This could also be done by the police on location with little effort in a spare room of the house they are using.
In addition there is plenty of AV gear out there capable of splitting the feed from cameras to record two different copies at the same time, in which case PD and NBC has a raw unedited original immediately.