Ok - we’ve seen this happen and I don’t understand how it works: A guy goes on the internet and starts typing to someone who he thinks is a 13 year old girl, but who is, in reality, a 37 year old, beer-bellied FBI agent. They chat and eventually the guy convinces the “girl” to meet him for sex. Ok, they guy shows up at the appointed place and, whammo, they arrest him for trying to have sex with a minor. And they usually convict him, too. Now, he never did talk to a minor. He may have THOUGHT he was going to, but he didn’t. He’s being arrested for talking to someone who was pretending to be a minor. Is that a crime? Why? What if he breaks into a Hollywood soundstage mockup of a bank, thinking that it’s a real bank, but it is only a facade. Can he be arrested for bank robbery because he THOUGH it was a bank? Someone sort this out for me please.
OK, I know nothing about the legal ramifications, but the popular idea is that sick people like that need to be locked up before they hurt someone. It gets really difficult when you are talking about potential crimes against children. My opinion is that the police be they federal or local, exist to stop crime, not encourage it. If my daughter talked to this guy on AOL, G-d forbid, I don’t think that she would allow herself to be talked into that, but there are obviously those who would.
A similar question was addressed late in this thread:
entrapment on the web
and is discussed more specifically in this thread:
Thought Crime?
I once saw on Law and Order that ADA Stone said that if you shot a person that you think is sleeping but is actually dead, you could be tried for murder. But it needs to be proven that you really thought the person was only sleeping.
I think that it is perfectly okay to fool sick people into a crime.
Why wait and spend time and money to FOOL those sickos? Why not just identify them as quickly as possible–maybe by tracking web users and see who follows links to some specially contrived “kiddie porn” sites–and then bust through the door and LOCK THEM UP as soon as their ISP’s can be tracked?
And why limit it to child molestors? If Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols could have been marked as the SICK MURDERING FUCKS THAT THEY ARE before the Oklahoma City bombing, we could have saved over a hundred lives!!! Didn’t they both subscribe to hate literature and anti-government writings? Shouldn’t the authorities have used that as a clue and put their asses on ice not based on their “actions” (when people were already dead) but instead of the sick thoughts and attitudes that were obviously already inhabiting their minds?
Everybody knows who the sickos are in this society, right? Racists, bigots, child molestors, homophobes–they’re easy to identify based on what they read and say, so let’s lock the fucks up RIGHT NOW!!!
DHR
I believe that law enforcement (FBI, local police, etc.) do have sites that contain child pornography in order to trap pedophiles.
Fortunately, this is a free country and people are allowed to hate. It is when you act on that hate (like McVeigh and Nichols) that punishment should come. You have a consitutional right to be a racist. And what kind of freedom would this country have if we started locking up people because they were “anti government”. That is the basis for this coutry’s founding.
Repeat after me: Everything I see about the law on TV is wrong.
In the situation you describe, the elements of the crime of murder are not completed.
The shooter could be tried for attempted murder, however.
- Rick
Everything you see about the law on TV is wrong.
Actually, doesn’t L&O have a legal advisor, so that their scripts are based in some semblance of reality and correct legal theory?
I have no idea. In fact, I don’t even know if the original poster correctly quoted the character on the show. But under the facts presented (shooting a dead body believing the person to be asleep, with the intent of causing death) does not constitute murder. It does constitute attempt.
I can tell you there is no dearth of legal error on Law and Order. The last show I saw dealt with a helicopter crash that turned out to be caused by a bomb. As the plot unfolded, a husband-and-wife cult leader sort of team became suspects.
The same attorney represented both the husband and the wife. This simply would not happen. Even if they were to waive conflict of interest initially, and even if their interests did not initially appear adverse, there came a point in the story in which the wife decides to confess - not to the crime, but to an affair she was having that gave the husband motive for the crime.
At that point, it should have been crystal clear to everyone that the interests of the Mr. and the Mrs. were adverse. But the lawyer doesn’t say anything, and neither does the ADA. This should, in real life, earn them sanctions from the bar.
In real life, the ADA would have had to make sure the wife was represented by new counsel before she started talking. He would have gotten the same information, without the chance that her statements would be tainted and suppressed.
That’s just one exmaple, from one show… but I don;t think I’ve ever seen an episode that didn’t have at least some minor (or major) legal procedure flaw.
So I repeat: TV is good drama, but no one should take their Law & Order education as being all that useful in the real world.
- Rick
Everything you see about the law on TV is wrong.
Law and Order may have a legal advisor, but it’s still a dramatized work of fiction. Just like Star Trek will alter its continuity if it helps the plot, L&O will step into shakey legal views if it makes for a more dramatic episode.
Wouldn’t shooting an already dead person be a similar situation to being caught trying to steal someone’s wallet only to find out that the person had no wallet to steal.
That’s not theft, but it is attempted theft. I remember helping a friend study for his bar exam with a question like that.
He passed, so I assume he knew the right answer.
CC, you forgot one very important item. They use a real girl , a young one BTW, to meet the guy in person. They don’t send a guy FBI agent. Now you see why they arrest the guy?
Ok, now I see how these BBS’s work. Out of about 10 responses, two pertained to my question. so, I’ll continue to try to figure this out. Handy, I never thought about the 13 y.o. girl who is sent out to meet the guy. If that happens, then, somehow, I guess the guy might be culpable of something. But I had the picture of the guy showing up at the malt shop and the FBI coming out and nabbing him. Still, there seems to be this part that hangs me up: He’s typing to someone who he THINKS is a girl, but is not. And what he says to “her” is somehow considered a solicitation for sex with a minor. But it’s NOT a minor. So - is he busted for thinking about sex with a minor, and planning to have sex with a minor - even though no minor was involved? That does, indeed, sound like a thought crime. God, I don’t want to be arrested when someone finds out what I’ve been THINKING about. Someone?
Lets put our guns in their holsters for a second and think about this, pedophilia is a social and mental disease and should be treated as such. I don’t see how making sure they’re all in prison, not to mention the huge violation in rights by performing entrapments, solves this problem.
Yes, a couple perverts in prison might make your AOL chatroom a little safer, but does nothing to solve the problem. It half-assedly attacks the symptoms and makes great PR for law enforcement.
In fact by passing laws that require sex-offenders to register with their community the law makers are admiting that prison does nothing for the pedophiles so they might as well warn others.
Sure modern society sees pedophilia as a sickeness, and rightfully so, but by demanding ‘sick’ people should not have the same rights as others and allow extreme measures to prosecute them works both ways because the definition of ‘sick’ is open to interpretation.
If the only way law enforcement can catch criminals is through entrapment then that agency is completely clueless.
Condsider the reporter who was preparing a story on child pronography on the internet. He exchanged photographs that he obtained on the internet with a law enforcement person posing as…well, some horrible nasty person who exchanges child pornography. The reporter was busted and convicted. Sorry that I have no names or dates. He did break the law, but the cop offering to trade pictures with him caused the crime to happen.
CC,
didn’t the “BS” in “BBS” tip you off?
That’s what I meant by suggesting that anyone who subscribes to hate literature ought, by the same logic, to be locked up as a preventative measure. Hate is a disease, and is universally condemned, is it not? Impure sexual thoughts against children lead to kiddie sex crimes, right? So don’t impure and hateful racist thoughts lead to racial “hate” crimes?
I didn’t follow the John Rocker case that closely, but IIRC wasn’t he required to get “psychological” counselling as a punishment for giving verbal expression to impure racial thoughts? Since evidently John Rocker is a “sick person”, and “sick people” are capable of crimes (in this case hate crimes), then I think hightechburrito would agree that it would be OK for a black (undercover) FBI agent to approach Rocker in a bar and mouth off about his mother. Once Rocker decks the guy, we can prosecute him for an obvious “hate crime”. With an enhanced prison sentence guaranteed, we can be sure of punishing Rocker and others like him, separating them from friends, family, and children, and destroying their careers and marriages, as punishment–sorry, treatment–for the sickness inhabiting their minds.
Yay! Justice is served, with a side of bacon!
DHR
CC said:
No, it’s not a thought crime, because he took actions toward committing the crime. He demonstrated the intent to commit the crime. He was just prevented from committing the crime before it took place.
For example, suppose someone plans a murder. Suppose they set out to commit the murder, but an accomplice loses heart and turns him in before it actually happens. Now while they cannot charge the guy with murder, they can charge attempted murder. Why is that not a thought crime? Because he took action to see that it happened. I believe the legal boundary (Bricker wanna help out here?) is that there must be some overt act beyond just “thinking about it” in order for the charges to stick. There must be some action taken that a reasonable person would agree shows intent to commit the crime.
Same way they get johns for soliciting. They don’t have to actually have sex with the guy to convict, they just have to get him to agree to pay for sex. So the deal with the pedophile (is there a better word for those wanting underage girls in puberty?) is that he thinks he is making arrangements to have sex with a minor - a crime - and he takes an overt act beyond just “thinking about it”. He arranges to meet the girl, after having discussed it with “her”. And they do use a plant to make the meeting so they can arrest him. I’m not sure the details of what is required at the meet, whether they can cuff him as soon as he identifies himself, or if they want some other clear statement of intent at that point. But the crime is attempted (statutory rape?), not “thinking about sex with underage girls”.
Help any?
I did quote that wrong. It constitutes attemt, but not murder.