Dear Abby

Great Debates
21

NO grey area???

“Dear Abby” is a ‘known informant’??

Heydiho! well, let me just crank up the old word processor and shoot out a few letters to the old gal, so my exhusband, the clerk who looked at me funny, and that former neighbor of mine I never really liked can get their homes searched.

I would seriously question any judge issuing a search warrent based on a letter to Dear Abby.

Maybe (and I emphasize maybe), send a cop out to ask ‘did ya write this letter?’ and upon hearing an ‘affirmative’, go on to ask permission to search, but dang.

PLease, minty, Sua, Jodi any lawyer out there, please oh please tell me that a letter purporting to be from some one, sent to Dear Abby isn’t sufficient cause to issue a search warrent!!!

22

Whoa, horsey!

Folks, let’s get a grip.

So you are saying thoughts or fantasies, without a statement of intent to act, should in and of themselves by sufficient for a criminal act? I hope you don’t really believe this.

Why? If he made no mention of an intent to act, and further demonstrated that he was concerned enough to seek help, why does that change things significantly? Why wasn’t this the pat answer “seek counseling”?

Duh. My point is that there is a signficant difference between finding child porn in a browser cache and an organized collection of child porn (and despite the fact that she had no knowledge of it). The latter is definitely damning. The first could be completely innocent. Has anyone not accidently crossed a website with objectionable content? Ever had porno website “pop-under” your browser? 40 child porn pictures could easily populate a browser cache on a single webpage, without any intent to have viewed them.

Circumstancially, he may look guilty. But 40 pictures isn’t 4,000. He at least deserves a fair trial.

Just to be clear, anyone actively collecting child porn should be held criminally liable (do early Traci Lord movies count?).

Perhaps I’m slow - how does this relate to my argument?

I have not argued any 4th amendment or some legal obligation that Abby had. I only argued that she should not have, based on what I have read (still haven’t seen the actual letter), from a personal ethics point of view. But I did leave room for the other side by saying, “If, however, he admitted some intent to harm (or had harmed) children, I have no problem with her actions.” And I stand by that. Certainly, he was stupid, because clearly she had no obligation to offer privacy. Otherwise, people with real problems will no longer write to her for advice.

Agreed. And if they only found the child porn in a browser cache, I think proof beyond a reasonable doubt will be difficult to attain.

And btw, I have no issues for the behavior of the police involved. The issue I raise is one for the courts.

23

wring, if the police questioned him, he admitted he wrote the letter, and consented to a search, I don’t believe that a serach warrant was necessary. IANAL.

24

wring, it won’t take any of those lawyers to tell you that I didn’t say that such a letter would support a search warrant. Beginning an investigation is not the same thing as getting a search warrant.

Read back to a few of your posts ago where you realized that the police got consent, not a search warrant.

And Dear Abby is an identified informant. My word choice was deliberate.

Let’s go back to the beginning. An indentified informant differs from an anonymous informant. If an informant won’t give the police his name, the police need to do more work to rely on any information given. One imagines that Dear Abby identified herself to the police. That means that the police can ask her questions about the information. They can assess her credibility, and in turn assess the credibility of the information she provided. It also means that it is more reasonable for them to rely on the information if they can corroborate it. I think that the guy admitting to writing the letter is pretty strong corraboration that Dear Abby isn’t off her rocker (about this, at least).

What I wrote, is that they had enough information to go talk to the guy.

But then, you know all this, because you posted this:

Though, I disagree by saying it is enough to send a cop to talk to the guy.
What I didn’t write, is that I don’t believe that the letter, by itself or with Dear Abby, is enough to get a search warrant.
And by the by, when did you last see Jodi post here? I hadn’t read anything by her in a while.

25

wring, that’s all they did. They asked questions to follow up on an investigative lead. A police officer can do that. What they can’t do is go in and search without consent, a valid search warrant or an exception to the warrant requirement. From the article it sounds like the guy volunteered the information and consented to the search of his computer.

The police are allowed to ask questions. They couldn’t drag you down to the jailhouse and interrogate you under hot lights based on a tip from Dear Abby or John Jones or whoever, but they can certainly investigate leads that they’re given.

If the guy had told the police to perform impossible sexual acts upon themselves, the cops would have had to leave. However, they probably would have done some more investigation and might have watched to see if there was anything going on between him and the kids he mentioned in his letter–like taking the kids to the bathroom in the park, or doing stuff in front of open windows, etc.

Then, if they were able to get more information to corroborate the tip they got from Abby, they’d probably go to a judge and get a warrant.

It’s called “a criminal investigation,” and they’ve been going on for 200 years or so in the United States. So far, the Republic has managed to keep from becoming a police state despite that.

Zap!

26

yea, I read your posts.
yea, the guy consented.

now, did you read where I asked ‘what if he hadn’t?’.

how about ‘since when is she a credible source?’

See, I have no problem w/the cops investigating based on some indentified person’s report of what they saw/heard whatever.

Or, even if, say I found a letter, written by my exhusband, where he claimed such and such.

Dear Abby is a columnist. She gets letters from thousands of people. Including, oh, say a bunch from Harvard Students trying to get her to react.

And, she didn’t know this person at all. All she had was a letter sent to her.

I do have a problem w/police resources used in this manner. A credible piece of info in order to start an investigation would be a neighbor seeing something, hearing something etc.

Then you have a known informant, and what’s more important, some idea that the info might have some basis in reality.

A letter to Dear Abby, where no one has a clue if it’s real or not, isn’t.

In this case, they seemed to have found something (depending on the nature of the files, as mentioned above).

But I still dispute that they had any realistic reason to check it out.

27

AZ Cowboy:

Whoops! Misread the post. Thought it was your statement, when in fact it was Tesseract’s. That should have said: "So Tesseract’s argument is ill-founded. "

I see. So you think that, based on the supposed high probability of Abby receiving prank letters, the cops shouldn’t have investigated? As in:

Bob Jones lives next to Ed Smith. Bob wants to play a joke on Ed, so he writes a letter to Dear Abby, saying that he, the letter-writer, is having fantasies about little girls. He signs the letter, “Ed Smith” and sends it off. Next thing the unsuspecting Ed knows, the cops are banging on his door asking if he wrote a letter admitting he was a pedophile. Ed denies it, the cops go away, and precious police man-hours have been wasted.

Fair enough, except that I think the police might want to notify Ed in either case, so that, if it were a phony letter, he could find out who was slandering him and sue the hell out of them.

28

Dear Abby and Ann Landers are sisters? What kind of incest is this? Is such a monopoly on advice legal?

29

wring, I’d love to help answer your question, but there are few hard and fast rules when it comes to issuing search warrants. Every situation calls for fact-specific inquiry, which means we’d need to know what the letter actually said. Does anyone have a link to the text of the letter?

As for Abby-as-informant, I think that’s really a bit of a red herring. It matters little whether Dear Abby gives the letter to the cops or whether the postman delivers it to them with the rest of the mail. What they have at that point is a letter purporting to be the statement of an identifiable man who admits to fantasizing about children. The question is whether that statement–considering also any indicia that it’s a bad joke or is otherwise unreliable–is sufficient grounds for a warrant to search the guy’s computer, not who handed the letter to the police. My guess is no, but I’ll try to come up with a somewhat more definitive answer when I get home and can look through my criminal procedure materials.

30

No, of course not. That’s why I wrote that the letter by itself wouldn’t support the issuance of a warrant.
You should also understand that your question is irrelavent. I’m saying that the police had enough information to get to his front door - you seem to suggest that they can’t be at his front door. Under your view, the police would not be able to ask to search, since they didn’t have the information they need to go ask him questions.

And if you’re still asking this:

I’m not being clear. The important question is whether the police can assess her credibilty. They can assess Dear Abby’s credibility far more easily than they can assess the credibilty of an anonymous person.
But, you are headed in the right direction. The police should determine whether the information they have is credible. These investigators did that.

You are trying to apply too high a standard to when the police can ask someone questions. The police can ask anyone a question - but they can’t always make a person answer. In this situation, they had enough information to ask him a question, but they couldn’t make him answer. He choose to answer.

How would the police determine whether the letter was real or yet another elaborate hoax from Yale? Is there a more simple method of determine whether it was real than asking the alleged author?

**wring[/]b], you don’t have to like the standard, but that doesn’t change the law and it doesn’t mean that the police got anywhere near a grey area of the law.
Can you identify a grey area that isn’t your personal belief?

This is too narrow a standard for reality. Have you heard of the recent case where the woman hit a man with her car, then drove him and left him to die in her garage. The police found the defendant because a friend of hers passed on some hearsay. I worry that under your standard, the police should not have investigated this information, as it is not based on eye-witness accounts of the crime.

31

exactly, toad. A ‘known’ informant, AFAIAC, doesn’t simply mean ‘known to me’ but also includes the concept ‘has reason to believe what they’re telling you is true’. And a letter to Dear Abby is about as anonymous as anything can get.

As far as libel/slander, in the first place one would have to demonstrate that there was a potential for the letter to become public. And, since this was the very first time Dear Abby took it upon herself to make a name public (other than public figures writing in as themselves sort of thing), I doubt you’d have a case for that, not to mention, how in the world would you prove who wrote it.

Also, I’m wondering, if the ‘prank’ had happened and the guy had denied writing the letter, would that have been all that happened? In my minds eye (ok, so that’s not a cite), I’d see the LEO continuing with the 'well, can we take a look around anyhow?" stance, and if that were denied, that might seem ‘suspicious’, etc.

paranoid me.

32

Puleez Robb hold the condescention please- in the guy in the windshield case, you had ‘debbie’ (or whoever) hear ‘sally’ (or whoever) say ‘I ran over this guy’. That’s not anonymous.

In this case, you have a letter. It purports itself to be from a particular person. Now, that letter is given to the police, ** not from some one who knows this person, knows that he wrote it** but from a columnist, who gets thousands of letters a day, many from pranks, and probably more than a few from folks who use a false name.

And on that basis, you want the police to use their resources to look the guy up and go ask him questions???

Say, I just found a letter, from a guy named “George”, the address listed is in Washington DC, he sez he tokes up every night. Guess the DEA will be checking it out, eh?

33

Yes.

But, you’re losing the thread. What they did isn’t in a grey area.
The cops had the opportunity to decide whether it was something credible and worth following up.

I doubt the DEA would be that interested. Take it to local law enforcement where George lives.

34

you really think the police have the time and resources to follow up on anonymous (since that’s essentially what it is) claims that some one is having bad thoughts?

In the letter, according to Abby, the guy was having fantasies. wasn’t acting on them. thoughts. no crime being reported.

and you want the police to check out the possability that some one might be really having those thoughts, and then might act on them in the future?

Silly me, I’d rather they spend their time, you know, investigating crime that’s been reported as having been committed.

35

Sorry wring, I haven’t yet read the contents of the letter, so unlike you I can’t be certain that the letter is an anonymous fake. From what I read of the story, I was under the impression that something about the letter could lead police to its purported author. Also, I read in the article that investigators with a Crimes Against Children unit were involved in the investigation. I’m just guessing that they could make an informed guess as to whether it was a hoax.
Then again, it was a fantasy of child molestation, not marijuana smoking. I don’t mind the detectives spending some of their time investigating the letter.

But then, I’ll likely just reiterate that this isn’t a grey area, and the police were well within the law to go talk to the guy. Whether it’s a waste of their time doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

If the police don’t have time enough to inquire as to whether a disturbing letter is genuine, we might need some more police.

36

Sigh, I’ll try and explain it again RObb

Neither the police, nor Abby, nor you, nor anyone else had any reason to believe that the person writing the letter was also the person who was listed as the author.

See?

So, in this case, it really doesn’t matter if they ‘thought’ it was real (and according to the link, he stated he was having fantasies, not actions, again, it’s thoughts).

And yes, I object to police resources being used to investigate cases based on strictly anonymous sources where no crime was even claimed to have occured.

There’s certainly enough actually reported crime that goes uninvestigated, unsolved, for me to want the police out knocking on doors in case the person wrote a letter to Dear Abby and in case the person also was telling the truth and in case the person was, in addition, actually doing something criminal/

YM obviously varies.

37

As a value judgment here, I have to side with Robb. There’s certainly no harm in having the police drop by this guy’s house to ask if he’ll ask a couple questions. Heck, we expect police to do that, if the tip or evidence is credible enough, and if the crime is serious enough. Looks like they may have done some serious good here this time, too. And if the letter turns out to be a fake, then the suspect tells the cops to shove off, or voluntarily answers their questions, and everybody goes along their merry way.

Now as to the hypothetical search warrant question wring posed above . . .

I’m assuming (1) the letter indicates the writer is having fantasies about molesting two young girls, (2) the letter otherwise indicates no other crime has taken place, whether possession of child pornography or otherwise, and (3) the letter identifies the writer and bears no apparent indicia of fakery.

Probable cause to issue a search warrant requires facts and circumstances sufficient to warrant a person of reasonable caution in the belief that an item subject to seizure will be found in the place to be searched. Pretty darned vague, huh? The Supreme Court has specified that an anonymous tip, standing by itself, is not sufficient to support probable cause, but if there are other factors indicating the tip’s reliability, then you can have probable cause to search.

Of course, this isn’t an anonymous tip. It’s the statement of an identifiable person expressing an interest in committing a very serious crime. Yeah, you might discount its credibility a bit due to the fact that it’s a letter to Dear Abby, but I don’t think that’s a reason to conclude that it’s a fake or inaccurate. The question, then, is what does the letter indicate that would support a search warrant?

Here’s where you get to the problem. A search warrant has to describe, with particularity, the items to be seized. So does an express interest in little children indicate that the writer probably has child pornography in his home? I really don’t think so. Though I think there’s probably a decent correlation between the two, fantasies of bad acts don’t demonstrate possession of illegal materials depicting such acts. Barring some sort of corroborrative evidence, I just don’t think a judge is going to issue a warrant for child pornography based on the Dear Abby letter.

38

In this thread, I’m going to side with wring. I’m not upset this guy is off the street. I’m worried about how little it took to send the police knocking at his door (per the articles I’ve read on the subject). I’m worried about the ramifications if it were my door they had knocked upon and I denied everything. I’m a law-abiding citizen. I’m willing to forego a certain amount of personal freedoms for the greater good and openly condemn those people who have caused me to forego my freedoms. I do NOT want to be under any kind of surveillance however. I do not like the possibility that the police may start asking questions of my neighbors. They start asking questions, my innocence or guilt doesn’t matter. The seed has been planted and the gossip vine will spread and mutate (think Richard Jewell on a smaller scale).

I am not saying the police did anything wrong. For all we know, they were the kindest, friendliest, most ethical officers ever in dealing with this man, and he just opened up to them willingly. I just don’t want to be on the wrong end of something like this and find out what can happen when it’s not the kindest, friendliest, most ethical officers handling the case.

39

Twin sisters, and I believe that both of their daughters now do most of the work (Dear Abby is Jeanne Phillips, the daughter of the original Dear Abby).

40

I wouldn’t worry about police comming to knock on your door.

If you wrote the letter and were messing with Dear Abby and said so the police would probably tell you not to do that and leave it at that. They would probably not be amused but I doubt that they would persue it further. There are more pressing matters. If you do have compromising things you have bought time to destroy evidence. Not that you should because it is wrong, illegan and you would be in more trouble if someone found out. But the police aren’t going to bust down your door.

As for the police even comming to the guys door well as has been said that’s what the police do. They are given information like, “There was a lot of strange noise next door and then silence for two hours.” They go and check it out. This letter falls into that category. Something is out of the ordinary, it is reported and the police see if it is criminal.

Really if the police knock on your door it doesn’t mean you have to let them in and if you deny everything in a reasonable way they have more important things to do. The police are busy, they don’t have time to deal with people who want to go back to watching TV after giving a pretty good explination for whatever made them knock in the first place.

Of course if you come to the door naked, covered in blood and there are the sounds of children screaming faintly in the background they may well force their way in on probable cause and not bother with the warrant at all.

I say the guy brought it all upon himself, maybe even to some extent that was the purpose. He sent a letter to an individual who had no obligation to keep the information to herself and is the type to tip off the authorities. He allowed the authorities to search his home and computer. At any point he could have said something like, “That’s my asshole friend who wrote the letter. He wanted to give me a hard time. Sorry that he wasted your time officers.”