One arguable case really would not support the accusations you’ve made.
I suppose I wouldn’t rule it out either unless I first reviewed each and every chat log, but I have no reason to believe it exists, either. And the burden of proof that one such chat does exist would certainly be on the person making the claim.
You spent four pages posting things like this:
Now that you understand that in fact, there is no begging, no luring, and that the predator in each case is the first to bring up coming over, to bring up sex – do you have any changes to make in your assessment?
Does anyone have the chat logs for Joseph Roisman?
Perverted Justice did not post the logs on their website. Also how are these chat logs obtained? Are they produced by Perverted Justice or do they get them from the IRC provider?
I’d be very surprised if this was the ONLY time PJ initiated contact and initiated conversation about sex. Everyone makes mistakes. You can’t tell me that they have a nearly perfect record with only one screw up. It’s not like PJ are ‘professionals’ they are simply volunteers(or vigilantes) cooperating with police.
It’s much more likely that:
- They never pursue chats where a decoy screwed up and initiated contact/sexual conversation.
- They never publish their involvement in cases where they screwed up.
And what explanation do you have for the fact that this is the first time in PJ’s history that a judge has dismissed one of their cases for entrapment?
My understanding is that when charges are pending they do not post the chat logs. In this case, given the acquittal, they will probably not post the logs at all; it would be unfair to a man who is as a matter of law not guilty.
The logs are stored simultaneously at PJ and off-site (and sometimes at a third location, if the cooperating police agency is equipped to store them live) and stored with an md5 hash to provide proof they have not been altered.
Can any of this be independently verified? From what I have seen, everything you have claimed about their procedures are provided from their organization. This is an unregulated group with no oversight.
Has there ever been an independent investigation of their practices? Are any of them liable for any misconduct they may commit? How can you be so sure that they have a clean record when they don’t release logs of chats where convictions have been overturned or were acquitted? How do you know that they don’t just post a conviction record without posting the acquittals. How are you so sure that this is first time someone was acquitted. Where is your evidence? Can it be independently verified? Do you also believe everything on the Church of Scientology website?
The more I read about the practices of these individuals, the more I am convinced these people don’t deserve to be taken seriously or trusted. How can you people possibly defend this type of behavior?
http://www.corrupted-justice.com/fact1.html
Please let me know when these idiots start getting as worked up about the REAL problems like child neglect, child hunger, and family child abuse. I am not convinced these people are doing any good AT ALL.
Should we encourage this type of rabid vigilantism just because the people they are attacking have a mental problem that most don’t?
[sarcasm]I can’t wait until the police start trusting other untrained and unchecked vigilante groups take care of even more problems.[/sarcasm]
And there is apparent evidence that your “heroes” have also had real children contact pedophiles:
Geris was apparently 14 when at the time.
Sorry I can’t independently verify any of this, but since all of your info is coming from PJs site, I might as well start posting unverifiable info as well.
And how many of these vigilantes are crossing the lines themselves:
http://legacy.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20070628-1057-sexpredatorsting.html
Can you verify that these men were ever prosecuted, and if they weren’t do you still insist on saying they have a nearly perfect record?
From PJs own website:
http://www.perverted-justice.com/?updates=recent&offset=10
Apparently in response to this (sorry all cites were beyond pay-wall):
About as respectful as you could expect.
That’s all from me. I am done with this topic and the people defending these vigilantes.
I had no idea that PJ was full of a bunch of arrogant, disrespectful and dangerous netizens until I started reading a bit more. Maybe all of you should do the same.
Sigh,
http://www.news-journalonline.com/special/predator/flaFLAG01021909.htm
Again more evidence that there is potential doctoring of evidence being done. Glad that we’re using unverified chatlogs as evidence.
Hashing the chatlogs is in no way going to prevent doctoring, if they were hashed AFTER being doctored.
I’m glad all I need to do to make chat logs legitimate is to hash them.
<MADEUPSTUFF> don’t be offended this is just to prove a point
[08:09:55] <+bricker> And then I realized, JFK had really been assassinated by the US government. And the moon landing had all been a hoax.
[08:10:05] <nutter333> I thought I was the only one who believed in crazy conspiracy theories.
[08:10:30] <error403> Did you guys see that amazing thing I just posted on Straight Dope? Suddenly everyone loves me and I feel both important and special.
[08:10:55] <+bricker> asl?
</MADEUPSTUFF>
Now verifiable for authenticity with an MD5 hash:
86fe53a5bb5338972fc4df3a6f610c61
When there is a conviction, the presumption of innocence is lost. The burden would be on you to show that any of these speculations have occurred.
The episodes of “To Catch a Predator” aired. You’re welcome to verify each name from the show against a published chat log. But your tactic of requiring your opponents to prove a negative is not going to be indulged any longer, at least by me. If you claim there’s a person accused by PJ but whose chat logs have not been released, let’s see some evidence of that claim.
This statement is untrue. I have posted contemporaneous news stories supporting my claims as well.
The “evidence” in this link is a quote from motion papers filed by a defense attorney, claiming PJ did not allow examination of their computers.
From that link:
But not only did PJ deny that this claim was true – but the judge agreed, denying the motion in question. After which Officer Spikes was found guilty and sentenced.
Correct. But this is why they save two copies – on saved in real time, off-site and not accessible to the PJ people.
Both copies are saved with an md5 hash. Can you explain how that’s vulnerable to tampering, and what evidence you have that it has been tampered with?
I have shared reports that the police are not always involved in evidence gathering.
Would you want to be convicted on evidence collected by amateurs?
The cases against these people are weak. I would have accused them of doctoring evidence and forced them to provide access to their computer system.
I would have questioned the legitimacy of their hashed log files and pointed out the raucous behavior of some of their other members. I would make the judge/jury see that these people are motivated to do anything in their power to make a conviction, even if it means bending the rules.
I wonder how many of those news articles that you’ve provided get their information from an impartial source. Seems to me that they all get their information from the same place you do, Perverted Justice’s website or a spokesperson representing them.
It’s clear to me now that they don’t have quite as spotless of a record as you lead me to believe earlier and again, that misinformation is based on you looking at their website and seeing the conviction rate. Odd that there no acquittals, case dismissals, mistrials, hung juries etc… even though they have occurred.
It would be quite a task to contact every police department or courthouse looking for records of their involvement with such cases. I don’t expect that all of these stings are well documented elsewhere. And since PJ is the ONLY source for most of this information online, I can’t exactly use them as a reliable/impartial source.
In an even more ridiculous case a kid was put away for looking at drawings:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/02/obscene-us-manga-collector-jailed-6-months/
I didn’t even know that was a crime, but his attorney told him to take a plea because of the nature of the crime and the images he was looking at.
What did you say about their being alternatives to a jury trial? Trial from the bench you said? Then explain to me why this attorney told him to take the plea. Do you think it was the right choice? Don’t you think that the nature of the crime you are accused of can have an affect on the outcome of a trial?
From the attorney of that case:
This seems to be a much less offensive crime, and the attorney still thought it was best that the person he was representing take a plea deal.
It’s absolutely obvious to me, that many of these men are being convicted based on the nature of their crime and not because the crime they are accused of can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
The real time offsite is the log from the IRC servers? And do the police receive it directly from the chat provider? Isn’t it well known that PJ works very closely with IRC providers and are themselves affiliated with some of these IRC providers? I am pretty sure IRC admins are well aware of their activities as often times they are the ones who inform Perverted Justice if their assistance is needed. I believe there is a conflict of interest and the evidence should be inadmissible.
Also, you’re claiming that these logs are gathered from IRC servers, but again, where is your proof? Besides what they claim on their website, are there any court cases where they clearly list evidence as being received directly from the IRC servers and directly given to investigators?
Also, considering some of these individuals have committed DDOS (and were convicted) attacks against both Rolling Stones (cited earlier) and Corrupted Justice, whose to say that they haven’t hacked into the server and manipulated files. It’s not impossible (or difficult) to make a file appear to have been created at an earlier date.
Again, seems like these cases would be easy to win if the nature of the crime didn’t involve children or attempted rape.
So what?
Do you believe that evidence not collected by police is somehow inadmissible?
No, of course not. Bu then again, I wouldn’t want to be convicted on evidence gathered by professionals. Frankly, even if the evidence against me had been gathered by the real-world equivalents of Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, and Sam Spade, I would not want to be convicted.
Perhaps you mean to ask if evidence collected by amateurs is legally admissible. Answer: yes.
OK. Good for you.
But as a former defense attorney, I can tell you that’s a great tactic if in fact the logs have been doctored. If you already know your guy did what the chat logs have him doing, then you don’t gain anything with that approach, and it’s possible you’ll ruin your credibility with the fact-finder.
Perhaps that would be a daunting task. But it’s even more daunting for me to prove that such cases don’t exist. That’s why the burden of proof in debate is allocated to the person making the claim.
The case against that guy can easily be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. “Seven books of manga inside contained cartoon drawings of minors engaged in sexually explicit acts and bestiality.” He admits he received and possessed the material.
Your gripe in this example seems to be the reach of the law, not the fact that the accused’s conduct violated it.
You know there are real sting operations I can get behind. In the cases where people are attempting to hire hitmen I find it very cut and dry.
You have group of trained professionals, gathering evidence, meeting with the offender multiple times to make sure he is serious about committing the crime, and you have video and audo of the whole thing. Finally, the person actually makes a transaction with the officer before they arrest him.
I think it’s very obvious when someone is guilty in those cases.
Now look at the Perverted Justice cases:
Police were not involved in evidence gathering.
We only have chatlogs which are easily doctorable as evidence.
There is no transaction, but I am not sure how you could expect one. It’s still harder IMO to prove someone’s intent based on the evidence provided by a shady group of amateurs.
And considering the support and undeserved credibility they receive from the easily offended masses, it would be quite hard to protect oneself if they decided to target someone maliciously.
For example: they DDOSed Rolling Stones for writing a scathing article about them. Though it might have been obvious they were getting revenge, they could have forged some chatlogs, planted them on an IRC server, and claimed the IP address/host mask belonged to the writer of the article (all they would have to do is initiate contact with him somehow to get this information). Possibly it might get thrown out of court, but I would never even want to be accused of something like that. Even if I was accused and then found innocent, I would still want to relocate to somewhere no one knew me.
This group is extremely dangerous and they need to be disbanded and strict laws prohibiting these types of actions need to be enforced (we already have laws for vigilantism - I am not sure why we aren’t using them).
That’s fascinating. But complaints about bias go to the weight of the evidence, not its admissibility.
Here is a link to the Federal Rules of Evidence. They of course have analogues in each of the fifty states. What provision of the rules of evidence are you relying upon in reaching your opinion that they should be inadmissible?
Yes.
What experience do you have in the criminal justice system? How many cases have you won at trial? On what are you basing your belief that they would be easy to win?
You to have the sort of belief that is often learned from mid-tier law schools such as “Law and Order,” “The Practice,” and even “Franklin and Bash.” The idea that all you have to do is suggest, “Who’s to say that they didn’t fabricate evidence?” is enough to render the evidence inadmissible.
Not remotely the case. When documentary evidence is authenticated under oath by its custodian and admitted into evidence, its weight becomes a question for the finder of fact. You are of course free to argue that they may have engaged in a conspiracy to alter the logs, but the finder of fact is free to weigh your theory and accept or reject it.
Unless you have something more than “Well, they might have…” then the typical reaction is to reject it.
Yes, if they started forging chat logs with my name, I don’t know how I would protect myself.
Except for one tiny, itsy bitsy flaw: how do they get me to show up at the decoys house with wine, condoms and duct tape? That’s the really tricky part.
Unbelievable.