When was that law drafted? There has been a rather fast and dramatic increase in video content over the last few years. Chat rooms have been around since the nineties after all.
I don’t know what you think you mean by “thought crimes.”
In the usual use of the term, a “thought crime” would be the crime merely of thinking something bad, accompanied by no action at all. If that’s what you mean, then no: we’re not punishing thought crime.
Perhaps you mean “thought crime” as requiring both a certain mental state as well as a certain action to exist before we punish. That’s true, and is almost always true for nearly the entirety of the criminal code. With rare exceptions, every crime requires both the actus reus – the guity act – and the mens rea – the guilty state of mind.
Usually they catch people saying things like “You’re not a cop, right?” or “I really shouldn’t be doing this, I could get in trouble.” They acknowledge that they know what they are doing is illegal- which you wouldn’t do in a role play that is obviously legal.
You may as well ask, “How can the state ever convict me of attempted murder, when I claim that all I ever intended to do was wound my victim and all they can produce is one wounded but alive victim?”
Here, they produce the chat logs and the profile pictures that were visible to you, and they ask the jury to infer you intended the obvious.
The jury is free to credit your testimony. If they do, of course, they will acquit you of the crime. The jury is also free to disregard your testimony and believe the chat logs and picture mean that you thought you were meeting an underage partner.
This is not new. In every crime that requires intent, the state has to prove what you were thinking, and they do that by the inference that you intended the ordinary results of your actions.
:dubious: Defending these guys is exactly what you’re doing. Those ‘nice guys’ who show up think they’re going to have sex with an underage girl and you think its sinister that their reputations get ruined?
The public shame is well deserved.
In 2007.
Huh. I concede the point then.
I still think that there is a huge issue of both consent, and lack of physical meeting though.
Not even close, there are several dozen bait players chatting with men looking for sex with underaged girls in any given day.
Cite for the claim that the decoys beg the other chatter to come?
OK. The state legislature disagrees with you. They believe it should be criminal to offer sexual activity even without meeting – that a crime happens the moment you propose the sexual activity.
And even if that law didn’t exist, the general law of attempt says that if you try to commit a crime, but are thwarted by some outside circumstance, you’re guilty of attempting the crime.
Then in the case of chatting with someone pretending to be something that they are not, what is the actus reus?
Would you mind addressing my liquor store question? I’m not trying to be snarky or anything, I’m just really interested in the answer because I don’t have a clue.
Cops also ends up blurring stuff here and there too.
You are seeing the guys who did give permission.
I think some of the shock of the OP, is any on of us, under certain circumstances can be tempted into something illegal. We all have weaknesses and there are situations we find ourselves in where little by little by little we fall into them without even knowing we were going there and without any intentions in doing so. For someone be be leading a normal and even productive life to have to deal with imprisonment and lets face it with this crime, a lifetime of public disgrace, for a human weakness is a scary thought.
Sure. The act is using a computer to propose sexual activity to a person you have reason to believe is less than 15 years of age.
Not at all. “If the police send a 22yo into a liquor store and the 22yo tells the clerk that they’re 20, has the clerk broken the law by selling them liquor?”
Probably, yes. If the state has a rule that all persons who appear to be under the age of 30, for example, must be carded, then the clerk broke that law.
If the state has a law that you can’t sell liquor to a person under 21, then the clerk may have attempted to break that law. And as a general principle, the law of attempt says that an attempted crime is itself a crime, and can be punished.
If you buy a kilo of baking soda from an undercover cop believing you had purchased cocaine, you have fallen into the same trap. There was no real drug dealer and there was no real coke are not going to be valid defenses
If someone made such a statement, you don’t sell to them, you have just been given reasonable information to believe you are about to do something illegal (sell to under 21).
Correct. And the same two possibilites exist: the state may have a law against buying or selling counterfeit contraband, and even if they don’t, you have attempted to buy contraband with the attempt itself being a crime.
I wasn’t inclined to defend these guys in the first place, but if the above transcript is even close to typical, I’ve gone from “Hopefully this’ll learn 'em” to “AUGH LOCK THESE PEOPLE UP FOREVER!” And I never think that about anyone, ever.
Read the transcript I just linked to and tell me if it changes your mind at all.
The decoys do not beg, at all. The instructions are quite specific, you let them suggest, let them make the first move, never accept the first offer, always make sure the target thinks you are the age you claim.
Alot of the bait players will say things like “I’m only 14, isn’t that kinda weird/creepy/odd” The guy will reply with something to the extent that she seems so mature, that such things are just misunderstood, love does not recognize the difference in age, whatever.
If a chat wanders into territory that PJ feels will lead to an easy entrapment defense, it never leaves PJ, and is never prosecuted.
My husband, whose place of business sells alcohol, says that to the best of his belief and knowledge, as far as Texas law is concerned, no illegal activity took place under this scenario. However, for the purposes of this discussion, the scenario you propose is not analogous.
What would be analogous is having undercover officers (who are over the age of 21) hang out at an “under-21 club”. When over-21s come in and proposition attendees (that they believe are under-age) to consume alcohol that they will provide, the UC officers arrest the over-21s for contributing to the delinquency of a minor (among other charges). Admittedly a gross over-simplification, but in this situation and in the “Perverted Justice” cases, the one proposing to break the law is the of-age person, not the supposed-minor.
While I am no fan of these “gotcha” shows, it is my understanding that the online decoys neither initiate contact nor propose meet-ups with the adults. The decoys’ response to any proposition is something along the lines of, “mmm…okay…whatever you say”, which does not constitute entrapment, IMO.
As for the “public humiliation” factor, if those arrested do not think they have done anything wrong, then why do they act as though they are ashamed of their actions? Further, why should they be ashamed? If they believe strongly that they are innocent of the charges and/or that the laws are draconian, they should fight them, and do so very publicly. We’ve seen many total nut-jobs successfully pushing wacky or sick agendas into the public eye merely by being tirelessly vociferous about them.