DATELINE: Has Catching Perverts Gone too far? [ed. title]

[Shamozzle]

@Dangerosa

All sex crimes? Exposing yourself in a park? Having oral sex with my husband (I think that’s still a criminal offense where I live). Purchasing a dildo in Texas? Selling Playboy to a sixteen year old boy? All these should be treated severely?

Yea, you are right. I don’t mean all sex crimes. Well, except for purchasing a dildo in Texas.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Shamozzle

Well, except for purchasing a dildo in Texas.

Down there they call 'em “Texas Toothpicks.”

[saoirse]

@Cat Fight

I’m curious about this, too (though I suspect transcripts would be wank bank fodder for many a lonely soul), and I wish these shows would mention the scores of abused kids who know their victims. I’m also a fan of Romeo and Juliet-type laws that allow for teenage boyfriends and girlfriends to not be arrested for raping one another. That being said, there is no good reason for a normal man to drive three hours in hopes of fucking a 14-year-old. No reason. If the only thing keeping most men from doing this is opportunity, and all the men featured on the show are otherwise great guys (even the one who had his kid in the car, or the ones who bring booze), then Og have mercy on our souls.

Here’s one example:

Casey gabs to potential predators on the phone. “Come on over, we’re not going to get caught,” she says. “If we got caught, I would get into trouble, and everybody would call me a slut, and I don’t want that, either. I’ll pay for your gas. It’s no big deal, trust me. My dad gave me plenty of money for the weekend.” When the guy fails to take the bait, her voice rises in pitch. “OK, fine, whatever, lame. L-A-M-E. You’re being a baby. I told you I’ve done it a million times!”

[FarmerChick]

My problem with this show, and why I have stopped watching it, is because I don’t for a second believe they “do it for the children”. They do it for ratings and publicity.

I have zero tolerance for child abuse in any form, I have been intimately involved with all forms of abuse. If you want to see how “To catch a Predator” really works, read the following article.

In a nutshell, Bill Conradt, an Assistant District Attorney in Texas, chatted, and yes talked dirty to a “Preverted Justice” decoy male, even set up a meet, then changed his mind. So what does “Dateline” do? Gets the local cops to arrest him, or try to. The end result is Conradt’s suicide and one big mess.

Perverted Justice is aptly named.

Esquire Magazine

Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die

[saoirse]

@FarmerChick

If you want to see how “To catch a Predator” really works, read the following article. …

Esquire Magazine

Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die

Dammit there’s the article I was looking for. I could have sworn it was int *The Nation * or The New Yorker, though.

[Anne_Neville]

@Dangerosa

Having oral sex with my husband (I think that’s still a criminal offense where I live).

Nope- the Supreme Court struck down those laws in the Lawrence v Texas decision in 2003.

[nd_n8]

@DigitalC

Just because we as a country decided 14 year old girls are just to stupid to make their own decisions doesn’t make anyone a sick pervert. Theres plenty of places were 14 is the legal age and they seem to be doing just fine. One of the dateline shows used freaking Miss America as bait, is anybody whos attracted to her a sick pervert?

You rang?

[Hostile_Dialect]

AIUI, though, the laws are still on the books, even if they’re unenforceable. And AIUI “unenforceable” doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t get booked for it (outside of Texas, that is)–just that if you fight it for long enough, you’re guaranteed to walk.

[VinylTurnip]

@Cat Fight

That being said, there is no good reason for a normal man to drive three hours in hopes of fucking a 14-year-old.

Agreed. With gas prices soaring, it makes more sense than ever to shop locally.

[Muffin]

@Hostile Dialect

AIUI, though, the laws are still on the books, even if they’re unenforceable. And AIUI “unenforceable” doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t get booked for it (outside of Texas, that is)–just that if you fight it for long enough, you’re guaranteed to walk.

We have that proplem here in Canada with people being arrested for having anal sex when one of them is under 18. It was prohibited by s. 159 of our Criminal Code, but then found to be unconstitutional on grounds of age discrimination and also sex discrimination: R. v. M. (C.) (1995), Ont. C.A., 23 O. R. (3d) 629, 98 C.C.C. (3d) 481. It still sits on the books, so when police want to upset gay teenagers and young gay adults, they arrest them under this charge, knowing full well that even although the charge will be tossed out immediately, the wrongly-arrested will be terribly upset by the ordeal. The police behaviour in these circumstances is shameful, and I expect that sooner or later there will be a malicious prosecution action by a wrongfully arrested person who is not shamed by the publicity and who has the funds to take on the police in court.

[Bricker]

@FarmerChick

In a nutshell, Bill Conradt, an Assistant District Attorney in Texas, chatted, and yes talked dirty to a “Preverted Justice” decoy male, even set up a meet, then changed his mind. So what does “Dateline” do? Gets the local cops to arrest him, or try to. The end result is Conradt’s suicide and one big mess.

Perverted Justice is aptly named.

I don’t understand.

Are you suggesting that the man shouldn’t have been arrested?

Why not?

[Mtgman]

@Bryan Ekers

Down there they call 'em “Texas Toothpicks.”

Nah, a Texas Toothpick is a large knife. In Texas a dildo is another word for a politician. And that’s why it’s illegal to have more than six. Any concentrations of politicians that large need special permits, or to be sent to Austin, where there are dildoes aplenty.

Enjoy,
Steven

[Ocean_Annie]

@Muffin

I think that drawing the line at a single age, rather than looking at all the circumstances, is folly. Hypothetical: a couple start dating when one is 14 and the other is 15. They continue their relationship throughout high-school, such that they are dating (and enjoying a sexual relationship as is normal between kids dating in high-school) at 14/15, 15/16, 16/17, and 17/18, at which time they are engaged to be married, but the senior of the couple gets convicted for rape and labeled as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

I agree, Muffin. The statutory rape laws should not target young men involved in sexual relationships with their underage girlfriends. It isn’t in the spirit of the law and is unjust. All states should have a Romeo and Juliet law to protect young men from unjust prosecution.

[FarmerChick]

@Bricker

I don’t understand.

Are you suggesting that the man shouldn’t have been arrested?

Why not?

Did you read the article? I wish a slow painful death on all child molesters, but do it properly fer farksakes.

relevant part

…What happens after a police officer arrests a suspect in Murphy, Texas, and charges him with a felony (say, online solicitation of a minor) is that the suspect is detained and a magistrate sets bail and then, eventually, the police send their evidence to the Collin County District Attorney’s office. It is up to the DA’s office to decide whether to present the evidence to a grand jury for indictment or, if there is insufficient or problematic evidence, to drop the case. The woman responsible for making the initial review of evidence is Doris Berry, one of the most experienced felony prosecutors in the 108-person office.

In the months following today, Doris Berry will review the cases the Murphy Police Department submits to her against the twenty-three men they arrested outside Dateline’s decoy house, and she will find a variety of problems.

Some of the problems will be technical. For example, in most of the cases, she will find so-called venue problems. In order to pursue a case on an online-solicitation-of-a-minor charge, you’ve got to prove that either the suspect or the victim in the case was physically present in Collin County at the time the crime was committed. The location of the decoy house is irrelevant: What’s important is where the chat suspect and the chat decoy were when they were actually doing their chatting. But in sixteen of the cases that the Murphy Police Department will submit to her, Doris Berry will find it impossible to prove that either the Perverted Justice decoy or the suspect was inside Collin County when the crime was allegedly committed.

Some of the problems will be more fundamental: She will find that all of the arrests may have been illegal. Under Texas law, there are only certain circumstances under which a police officer can make an arrest without a prior warrant. But in all of these “To Catch a Predator” decoy-house arrests, it will come to light that not only was there no warrant but the police had done literally no prior investigation. Instead, they simply camped outside the decoy house and arrested the men who emerged after receiving a prior signal from the Dateline crew inside. The only thing Doris Berry won’t quite be able to figure out is whether this means that Dateline had become an agent of the Murphy Police Department or whether the relationship was the other way around. She’ll discuss this question with her boss, John Roach, the district attorney, and Roach will eventually form the opinion that “the Murphy Police Department was merely a player in the show and had no real law-enforcement position. Other people are doing the work, and the police are just there like potted plants, to make the scenery.”

The thing is, Doris Berry is a prosecutor. She wants to see bad guys punished. She’s read the transcripts, which means she knows most of these men are bad and a lot of them are probably dangerous. And if she rejects the cases, she knows what will happen: Instead of receiving the incarceration and supervision that might prevent them from someday soliciting real kids, not fake ones, they’ll receive only Dateline’s nationally televised shaming.

But the law is the law, and you can’t just wish a batch of mangled cases good.

On June 1, 2007, seven months after the end of the sting operation, three months after Dateline airs the relevant episode of “To Catch a Predator,” the Collin County **District Attorney’s office will announce that it has decided not to pursue indictments for any of the suspects Murphy police arrested outside the decoy house. **

---

Gator arrives at the house soon after the SWAT team secures it. He enters and hastily executes the search warrant, seizing Conradt’s Sony VAIO and a mainstream pornographic DVD called DreamBoy, as well as a bunch of other things that his sleep-deprived and shocked mind falsely thinks might have some relevance to this case, including an in-flight magazine called Red Hot and packets of imported Australian Vegemite.

Months later, Gator will learn that a forensic analysis of the laptop has verified that Bill Conradt was the person who chatted online with “Luke,” but that the computer hard drive was otherwise devoid of anything illegal or indicative of sexual predation. Soon afterward, Gator will resign from the Murphy Police and consider never returning to law enforcement. He will make ends meet working at a private security firm. He will meet with a reporter in the reporter’s hotel room, recount what he did and what he didn’t do, and he will start to cry and then apologize for making a fool of himself.

Of the people directly involved in the events leading up to the death of Bill Conradt, only a couple of others besides Gator will express anything close to regret…

[Hostile_Dialect]

@Bricker

I don’t understand.

Are you suggesting that the man shouldn’t have been arrested?

Why not?

Let’s start with the simplest reason: he didn’t commit a crime.

Actually, you know what, that’s as good a place to end the list as any. Unless you just like locking people up, in which case I have some friends in the White House I’d like you to meet.

[Bricker]

@Hostile Dialect

Let’s start with the simplest reason: he didn’t commit a crime.

sigh

It never ends.

OK, Criminal Law 101: in order to make an arrest, probable cause must exist to believe that a crime has been committed, and that the person in question committed the crime.

Texas Penal Code § 15.01(a) provides:

A person commits an offense if, with specific intent to commit an offense, he does an act amounting to more than mere preparation that tends but fails to effect the commission of the offense intended.

Texas Penal Code § 33.021(b) provides:

(b) A person who is 17 years of age or older commits an offense if, with the intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person, the person, over the Internet or by electronic mail or a commercial online service, intentionally:
(1) communicates in a sexually explicit manner with a
minor; or
(2) distributes sexually explicit material to a minor.
© A person commits an offense if the person, over the
Internet or by electronic mail or a commercial online service,
knowingly solicits a minor to meet another person, including the
actor, with the intent that the minor will engage in sexual contact,
sexual intercourse, or deviate sexual intercourse with the actor or
another person.
(d) It is not a defense to prosecution under Subsection ©
that:
(1) the meeting did not occur;
(2) the actor did not intend for the meeting to occur;
or
(3) the actor was engaged in a fantasy at the time of
commission of the offense.

Can you explain why probable cause did not exist to believe that Bill Conradt had committed crimes under the foregoing statutes?

[joechip236]

@Bricker

Can you explain why probable cause did not exist to believe that Bill Conradt had committed crimes under the foregoing statutes?

The police had no indication that the alleged crimes occurred within their jurisdiction.

[VinylTurnip]

Interesting, Bricker. Do you have any idea how long those statutes (in the latter quote) have been on the books in that form? They appear to me to be carefully worded to allow prosecution for precisely the sort of stings exploited by Perverted Justice and Dateline— particularly (d), which almost seems “tacked on.”

It’s almost like having a law against trying to rob a bank or even talking about the idea of robbing a bank—and oh, by the way, you can’t claim as a defense that you never actually robbed the bank, or never planned to show up, or were just joking when you said “you know, one day we should rob a bank!”

[Hostile_Dialect]

@Texas law

A person commits an offense if, with specific intent to commit an offense, he does an act amounting to more than mere preparation that tends but fails to effect the commission of the offense intended.

The ADA’s actions did not even go as far as “mere preparation”, considering that he specifically announced his intention to not commit the crime.

@Texas law

© A person commits an offense if the person, over the
Internet or by electronic mail or a commercial online service,
knowingly solicits a minor to meet another person, including the
actor, with the intent that the minor will engage in sexual contact,
sexual intercourse, or deviate sexual intercourse with the actor or
another person.
(d) It is not a defense to prosecution under Subsection ©
that:
(1) the meeting did not occur;
(2) the actor did not intend for the meeting to occur;
or
(3) the actor was engaged in a fantasy at the time of
commission of the offense.

That’s ass-backwards. What the hell is the point of d2 (the bolded part)? Anyway, he didn’t knowingly solicit a minor, he unknowingly solicited an adult in the entertainment industry. If it were a cop, not a Justice Pervert, on the other computer, I’m certain it would have been entrapment, in at least a moral sense. (I can’t claim to know Texas law, or to expect Texas law to make any moral sense whatsoever.)

[Bricker]

@joechip236

The police had no indication that the alleged crimes occurred within their jurisdiction.

How so? Conradt lived in Texas. The laptop that was seized from his home showed that it was used to conduct the chat sessions at issue.

There may have been question of which COUNTY COURT had jurisdiction to try the offense, but that has nothing to do with the power of every peace officer in the state to make an arrest for a violation of law, when he has probable cause.

In any event, the police arrived at the house pursuant to a valid search warrant. Even if your claim were correct, the good faith exception laid out in US v. Leon, 468 US 897 (1984) would apply, would it not?