I don’t really care what your personal moral sense tells you. The claim at issue here is whether the police had probable cause to believe a crime had been committed. If you wish to defend the man on the basis that under your personal moral code, he’s blameless, I will find it impossible to argue, since you and you alone are the arbiter of your personal moral code. The laws of the state of Texas, however, are a bit more grounded in objective fact. There is little question that the police had probable cause to believe a crime under those laws had been committed.
It’s true that he didn’t solicit a minor, but rather an adult in the entertainment industry. That’s why we have probable cause to believe he’s guilty of ATTEMPT, not of the actual crime.
But you can claim to know it well enough to make a confident statement, replete with an air of authority, that the man had not committed any crime in this instance. Perhaps you meant that he hadn’t committed any crime under your personal moral code?
Sorry Bricker and IANAL (for which I am not sorry but very grateful! :)) but all of that still seems to equals that the crime is something that occurs “with a minor” and “to a minor” … and that once that is done it is no defense to say “I didn’t think the person really was a minor, I thought it was another adult and that we just having some fantasy play.” or “I wasn’t going to really do it.” But under the law you posted no minor really involved equals no crime committed, no probable cause to suspect a crime. Moreover, it seems that in these Dateline cases it is the adult who is being solicited, not the pretend minor. The adults’ alleged crimes appear to be that they are answering “Sure.” to an alleged teen-ager’s solicitations. Which was staged for the purient entertainment of the masses.
Your post has convinced me that under Texas law no crime had occurred and that there was not even probable cause to suspect one. Hostile’s statement is amply supported by your cite.
As the Esquire story shows, “To Catch a Predator” is not interested in the law, just ratings, and they don’t care who they hurt, or even kill.
They roll into these little towns with inexperienced law enforcement and steamroll over them. If they really were getting the bad guys put in jail for real charges and real time, great. But they don’t, so no way can I in good conciousness support them, even though the idea is great.
<Haven’t read entire thread – sorry – so might be repeating someone here>
The age of consent is not the same worldwide . To all those people who think men trying to hook up with a 14 year old are sick and should be given lengthy jail terms, consider that some nations, in fact it appears some american states, don’t even consider it a crime at all.
I know the current climate is that it’s not PC to say such things, but any straight guy will be attracted to women in their early teens from time to time – after all, some look physically the same as a grown woman. The reason we don’t take it any further is because we respect that these people are not mentally mature enough yet, and may be taken advantage of. But I can see how this sting operation could have conveyed the image of a mature person below AoC, and I feel sorry for the guys that got stung.
They should’ve said the minor was aged 10 or something.
Here’s another honest question: is the unsuccessful attempt to commit a crime automatically considered a crime as well? Or would the law need to specify “knowingly solicits, or attempts to solicit, a minor” for it to be a prosecutable offense?
Common sense would suggest it would be a crime, but the law is not always congruent with common sense—e.g., the common-sense (but apparently extralegal) notion that “knowingly soliciting a minor” would require an actual minor to be involved somehow, rather than a fat middle-aged cop typing lots of "lol"s, a smarmy TV host, and an itchy guy in a tree suit.
Laws exist to punish people who have done harm. When has this individual done harm. Don’t bother quoting the statute again; if it were possible to actually prosecute these individuals, they would have been prosecuted. I am operating under the assumption that a Texas ADA knows a little more about the Texas penal code than you do, of course.
What I am STATING, not suggesting (just so there is not confusion) is that people should not be put in such positions that the only way out that they can see at the time is suicide. Humiliation on national TV, while entertaining to some actually affects real people. This is not the first time someone has killed themselves, IIRC, a Jenny Jones episode lead to a suicide too. At least the outrage from that debacle lead to the eventual demise of her show.
The only notable Jenny Jones death I know of was a murder. A man was surprised on the show by another man who had a crush on him. The straight man did not react well, later shooting the gay man. AFAIK Jenny Jones show went off the air solely due to low ratings.
RE No Minor Involved
It makes perfect sense to me that you can be prosecuted even though you weren’t really chatting with a minor. Police can arrest johns by posing as hookers. You can be charged with drug offenses even if you are only selling a legal substance which you claim is illegal drugs. The men think they are chatting with minors. Thus, the intent and attempt to have sex with a minor is there.
Re Entrapment
Bricker (and any other doper esquire in this thread) could you post a factual definition and explanation of entrapment. I have a feeling that many posters are not working with an accurate legal definition.
You’ve answered your own question; it was a laptop, which is portable by definition. Conradt could have been almost anywhere on planet Earth when he was chatting with the decoy.
There’s a reason why most of these “internet predator” arrests happen when the alleged pedophile shows up for a meeting. That shows clear intent and ties the crime to a physical location. The police didn’t have that in Conradt’s case; all they had was the word of Dateline NBC that there was a nice, juicy, arrestable pervert available. Dateline ran out of patience when Conradt wouldn’t agree to a meeting and decided it would be fun to just nail him anyway, and the stupid police went along with it.
Only if they actually break the law. It is against the law to say, “I’ll pay you to have sex with me,” no matter who you say it to.
Is this true? Is there a cite for this? If it is, doesn’t putting oregano in a baggie and trying to find a buyer kind of resemble pretending to be a sexually available 14-year-old girl and trying to find a predator?
Yes, he COULD HAVE been almost anywhere. But the chat participant called him at his home and he answered, during the chat. Of course, he COULD have had his phone relayed to some place outside of Texas.
But you misunderstand what probable cause is. You are raising objections that certainly should be heard by a jury that is weighing guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But for the police to arrest someone, probable cause is the only standard of proof required. It doesn’t require a certainty, nor does it require that other reasonable hypothesis besides guilt be eliminated.
Yes, because Dateline’s word was sufficient, standing on its own, to create probable cause, just as any informant’s word would be.
Yes, it’s true. I can’t keep muddling through the Texas penal code, so I’ll revert to a state for which I am intimately familar with the criminal law. In Virginia, Va Code § 18.2-248(A) provides:
And no, it doesn’t resemble the predator search, because the law specifically targets imitation controlled substances, not imitation 14 year old girls.
Even if we agree with your analysis that sexually explicit “filthy talk” was the only thing involved, that too is against the law when directed at a minor from an adult. Because no actual minor was involved, the crime is ATTEMPTED violation of § 33.021(b).
Sure. There have been numerous threads over the years that have discussed entrapment at length, but here’s a summary.
Entrapment is generally an affirmative defense to a crime. This means that, unlike the usual formula wherein the government is obliged to prove each and every element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt, a person claiming entrapment has the burden of proof.
Entrapment occurs when the genesis for a crime arises entirely from government agency - the police, or persons working closely enough with police to be considered their agents. If the crime never would have been committed except for the government’s urging, entrapment has occurred.
If the accused can be shown to have had a predisposition to commit the crime wholly apart from the government’s actions, the entrapment defense must fail.
Looking at the morass of logs at the Perverted Justice site, it seems to me that their method is to always let the chatter make the first move. They never suggest sex or sexually explicit ideas; they always let the first sex practices questions come from the man at the other end of the keyboard. In general, this alone is likely sufficient to prove the “predisposition” that is required to defeat a defense of entrapment.
Therein lies the point of the entire exercise: if they did that, they wouldn’t nab enough people, because while every straight man in the world is physically wired to find some 14-year-old girls sexually attractive (at the basest level); only a fraction of a percentage of people (presumably) would feel the same way about a 10-year-old; so if the bait were supposed to be 10 years old, there would be fewer perverts to catch and their ratings would suffer. “We didn’t find anyone this week, but THEY’RE OUT THERE! Seriously! What, you don’t believe me? Tune in next week! No, really! …Please?”
What if the john says “Actually, you know what, I think I’ll just head home by myself”? What if the seller says “Hey, actually, I’m not going to sell this to you, it’s just ground-up caffeine pills”?
It’s true. I don’t have a cite offhand, but IIRC people were getting off of charges by saying that they weren’t really selling E (for example), they were selling caffeine pills that someone was stupid enough to buy thinking they were E, so it became legal to sell things that weren’t illegal as illegal drugs.
No. The person putting oregano in a baggie and trying to find a buyer is the person committing the crime, not the person setting up a sting. And FTR, that wouldn’t work–everyone who qualifies as a higher lifeform than a rock would smell-check the stuff.
Bricker, I had a response to your questions typed up on my home comp, and I guess I forgot to submit it. It’s still there, so I’ll put it through when I get back home tonight.