Here’s a portion of the chat log from the PJ site – I grabbed the very first one listed:
I have emphasized telling lines in red. The sequence is pretty clear. The decoy says nothing untoward.
That guy ought to be imprisoned for crimes against the English language, if nothing else.
I should have said, “Here’s a portion of A chat log…”
Not to give the impression that this one relates to the Conradt case, which it does not. It’s merely an example to answer what MaxTheVool was wondering about. Based on other chat logs I have read at the site, this one is typical.
At this point I’d like to quote something G Wilder once said about the law
“Men’s rea! How could this happen? I’m so careful! I always use condoms! I have men’s rea! My God!”
(ETA: This is the post I typed up yesterday morning.)
Then we have nothing to discuss, because my point is that these stings should not be happening in the first place, especially not at the hands of the entertainment industry. If you’re content to go through the legal ramifications with a fine-toothed comb, be my guest, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what was meant by “Has Catching Perverts Gone too far?”.
I would argue that the adult in the entertainment industry most likely solicited him, which AIUI is no longer a crime in Texas.
I was speaking from my general understanding of the law as it applies to these kinds of things. IANAL and I’ve made it a goal to spend as little time in Texas as possible, not to mention that I’ve never solicited a minor or anyone in the entertainment industry, so I don’t think I can be reasonably expected to whip out the fine points of recently-codified Texas law on command in any debate. I also don’t have the patience or the legal understanding to comb through the laws of any given jurisdiction to make sure I’m saying exactly the right thing every time I mouth off in a debate on the SDMB. This may come as a surprise to you, but not everybody is a lawyer.
That was the OP question, and the reason I posted the link to the Equire article in the first place. It wasn’t to get into a legal debate, it was to state that in my opinion, YES, “To Catch a Predator” has gone too far and this is MY reason why.
Again, destroying peoples lives for “entertainment” went out with the fall of the Roman Empire didn’t it?
Have you seen any broadcast TV lately? I got roped into watching that Tila Tequila show yesterday, and it made me really uncomfortable. Apparently it’s an elimination dating type thing, and at this point two guys and two girls are left in the running. OK, that’s great, very progressive, etc. But when Tila and one of the boys went to meet his family in upstate NY, she was obviously told to cause a shitstorm. I don’t know if the “family’s” responses were scripted or not, but the entire extended family was there, and while everyone was standing around in the kitchen Tila basically threw in “Hey guys, I’m bisexual” out of left field. The family appeared to be doing what it could to keep its composure until dinner, when she “accidentally” got whipped cream on what clothing was covering her right boob and tried to get her “date’s” brother to clean it off for her. Date’s Mom got up and walked out, and later they showed footage of Tila leveling with her, and then Date’s Mom thinks she’s just the sweetest thing since apple pie.
There wasn’t any destroying of lives, per se, but humiliation was definitely served on everyone but Tila for the purpose of entertainment. I really felt like an old fogey watching it. Am I in the wrong here? Cause I sure feel like an outcast for not being able to get over how uncomfortable it makes me.
I live on a farm in rural Alberta. I decided to spend my “entertainment” dollars on satellite internet instead on TV. Best decision ever!
Unfortunately, on late night TV I have caught that piece of crap you are talking about. I watched it for about 5 minutes. I refuse to pollute my brain with such shit. I buy a lot of DVD’s instead…
end of hijack 
this is a great point- a better more rewarding sting would be an adult trying to sell their three year old, and then catching the assholes who show up. 14-15 is wrong, but its grey area if the perp is 18-20- Traci Lords was doing porn at 15- no excuse for a teen, but really no excuse for a three year old.
And who are these perps fooling- some hot 14 year old really is dying to have sex with a fat balding 50 year old? On what planet?
wrong thread
Yeah, I felt that way when I read about some of the “Borat” scenes. Yeah, I get it, Americans are stupid and unenlightened, but it just feels so exploitative. You’re not doing this to expose racists/pedophiles/bigots–you’re just doing it for ratings. Well, okay, clearly Tila Tequila is only doing it for ratings, but so is “To Catch a Predator”–only they mask it with the whole “for the children” thing, which makes it even more cringeworthy.
I’m with you in principle, but at the same time i wonder why anyone would agree to let a camera crew from one of these “reality” shows into their dining room in the first place. Surely anyone who hasn’t been living on a desert island knows that sensationalism and rating are all these people are interested in. If you’re willing to open your home to them, you shouldn’t be surprised when they do precisely what they always do.
As for the whole Dateline pedophile sting operations, i think that there’s nothing wrong with the cops conducting sting operations to track down child molestors, as long as they don’t step over the line into entrapment. But there’s just no need for them to do this is conjunction and cooperation with profit-seeking, sensation-seeking TV programs.
I’ll give Chris Hansen credit for one thing, though. He’s one of the few people who can appear on screen with a child sexual predator and appear more offensive than the pedophile.
[quote=Wee Bairn]
this is a great point- a better more rewarding sting would be an adult trying to sell their three year old, and then catching the assholes who show up. 14-15 is wrong, but its grey area if the perp is 18-20- Traci Lords was doing porn at 15- no excuse for a teen, but really no excuse for a three year old.
/quote]
The problem is that there aren’t nearly enough of those guys to find one every single week for several years, and the fact that those asshats were only getting 30-60 days in the slammer, tops, would enrage the audience. (The Dateline guys have clearly shown no ability to build a decent case, even with the help of actual attorneys who probably want very badly to lock the so-called “predators” up.) In essence, what you’d have is the entire into-three-year-olds community suddenly realizing that they can suffer no real consequences from finding three-year-olds to rape on the Internet. And a show without the ratings and the publicity.
Enough fat balding 50-year-olds believe it, apparently–or the logs on the Dateline website are bullshit and they’re really, really trying hard to pull the 50-year-olds in. Either way, boggles the mind.
Agreed. (Although Borat was, for the most part, genuinely funny; it didn’t rely completely on gross-out humor or humiliation humor, like a lot of other “comedies” do. It had a legitimate and funny (if overdone) storyline, and the main characters were portrayed as being just as ignorant of American culture as the WASPy Americans were of other cultures than their own. Don’t get me wrong, there were scenes that went too far. But as a whole, it had some worth.)
Any chance a mod can change the title of this thread? Everytime I look at it, I think that my favorite PBS documentary program is tackling the tactics of Chris “Smarm Master” Hanson and company.
The problems I have with the program is its an operation run by volunteers with ,as far as I can tell, no formal training.WikI points out that entire cases were thrown out because they were so weak,not to mention the “kids” sometimes initiated the sexual overtures.
The biggest problem I have,however,is the program and volunteers are not held accountable for the crassness of destroying people for ratings.All the program does is force disturbed men deeper into the shadows
[QUOTE=Hostile DialectI would argue that the adult in the entertainment industry most likely solicited him, which AIUI is no longer a crime in Texas.
[/quote]
Based on what evidence, precisely. If you review the hundreds of logs posted on the PJ site, you will see that they follow a very clear protocol with respect to solicitation and overtures – in every case, the would-be molestor makes the first overtures and solicitations.
What is your reason for believing this went any differently?
No surprise at all. What DOES come as a surprise to me is someone willing to mouth off, as you quite candidly admit you did, and make sweeping, confident and definitive declarations of what the law is, and then whine when called on your inaccuracies that you’re not a lawyer. You offered a legal conslusion in support of your thesis, and that conclusion was wrong. An intellectually honest person would simply concede they were in error.
Cite for the proposition that the “kids” initiated the sexual overtures?
Most of the weak or inappropriately handled cases are weeded out before they ever get any investigative resources thrown at them. Generally speaking it goes as follows.
Bait volunteer is propositioned
Bait volunteer attempts to aquire as much info as possible.
Bait volunteer forwards chat logs to PJ oversight/management team
If they did something royally stupid, it dies there, no calls to the police, no threats or hate mail, game over, bait player fucked up so lets not make a scene and maybe we can get him again later.
If it looks solid, PJ management passes logs to followup teams. Followup does as much as possible to harvest as much information as possible about the suspect as they can. Find employers, relatives, etc.
Once followup has nitpicked this persons life apart, it goes back to PJ for arranging an in person meet/live bait scenario like you see on TV.
The guys on TV have already been reviewed by law enforcement, if the evidence was too shaky for a decent chance of a conviction you don’t see it on TV. Only a handful of those cases have not resulted in convictions of some kind at trial. Conviction returned, nobodys life was destroyed for ratings, it was destroyed by doing something they knew was illegal, and went out of their way to do it.
See South Park episode titled “La Petite Tourrete” for a side-splitting spoof of Dateline.
Because I don’t trust Perverted Justice any farther than I can throw it. You might get me to read one of those logs if you could prove to my satisfaction that it was presented in exactly the same way, word-for-word, under oath. Even then, I would be skeptical.
In case I haven’t been clear about it: I was wrong about Texas law and I’m sorry.
Thanks for that little dig at my intellectual honesty, BTW. I didn’t think personal insults were acceptable in this forum, but I could be wrong about that too.
FTR, the reason I didn’t “simply concede” I was in error is because I didn’t believe I was–to me, my statement “he didn’t commit a crime” was more literal than legal, at least in the (non-legal!) sense that crimes against minors are defined as specific actions which cause undue harm to children. I understand that that definition wouldn’t hold up in court, but I don’t expect it to, and when I said “crime” I didn’t mean “a violation of any law”, which is how you read it. (Of course, since you are a lawyer, you would/should read it like that; after all, if you hadn’t done that and cited the relevant Texas law, I would be a little more ignorant about it today.) For example, some obscure law or judicial precedent could have determined at some point in time that holding a knife in a balled fist belies criminal intent and is therefore illegal, but if someone were throw in jail for holding a knife in a balled fist and then regaining control of himself and dropping the knife without hurting or specifically threatening anyone, and I said “he didn’t commit a crime”, I would not be referring to those specific statutes. Just like if I said of an 18-year-old boy and his 16-year-old girlfriend, “he didn’t rape her”, I wouldn’t mean that he didn’t do anything that could legally be construed as rape by statute, I would mean that he didn’t violate her by using physical and/or emotional force to have sex with her without her consent.
The whole reason I’m typing all of this out is that I believe that law enforcement can, should and does use discretion to determine who to arrest, why and when. For example, a coke user’s cooperation with the police might hypothetically stop a murder, in which case I think it would be reasonable for the police to decide not to arrest him on possession charges. From a theoretical standpoint, the idea of a police force that did every single thing by the book would be nice in a lot of ways, but the fact is that corners get cut when more important things need to get done. To further clarify, I am not saying that the Texas county in question was legally wrong to arrest the guy, and I officially retract all allusions to the contrary, including “he didn’t commit a crime”. But I stand by the point I’ve put forward for the entire thread: this TV show is pure evil, and any branch of law enforcement that participates in it is not exempt from the moral ramifications in my mind. Of course, that and $1.50 will buy you a cup of coffee, but nothing happens in a vacuum and specific legality is not all there is to this.