I can’t understand why the sexual nature of the crime is the sticking point. Any citizen might be offered drugs by a stranger, a co-worker, or friend. Citizen could decline and walk away. Citizen could be offered stolen property from the back of a van at cut-rate prices/counterfeit goods/bootleg movies/peer-to-peer files etc, and could decline and stay out of trouble. All manner of illegal goodies are declined on the daily because either morals or the repercussions of the crime stop the average citizen from misbehaving.
Since when is temptation an excuse for pursuing sexual contact with underage girls? Underage girls can be hot. See Baby One More Time , Fly on the Wall, Aerosmith’s Rag Doll(in which apparently older girls are dressed as sexy children) I assume most of us are familar with Toddlers and Tiaras; less said about that, the better. Girls (and boys) in the throes of puberty are appealing to look at, and the teenaged-brain is damn near poisoned with hormones that tend towards reckless thoughts and behavior. Luckily laws are in place to protect kids from themselves and horny adults who know better.
There’s a additional nuance to entrapment. “Entrapment is the conception and planning of an offense by an officer, and his procurement of its commission by one who would not have perpetrated it except for the trickery, persuasion, or fraud of the officer.” Quoting Stamper v. Commonwealth, 228 Va. 707 (1985).
The idea behind prohibiting entrapment is that to take someone who has no intent, idea, or desire to commit a crime, plant the idea of a crime in his mind, encourage himn to commit the crime, and then arrest him when he does is contrary to our notions of fair treatment and justice.
However – when the individual is already predisposed to commit the crime, those concerns don’t apply.
In this chat, it’s true that the decoy at least indirectly urges him to come over first. But notice that the same individual had previously chatted with two different PJ volunteers under two different teenage decoy personalities earlier. And notice this exchange:
This shows a conscious effort to build a defense. He knows the age of his target but wants her to create an adult profile that will allow him to claim ignorance.
These things, taken together, show that he was already predisposed to commit the crime, and thus the entrapment defense can’t be used.
“If the criminal design originated in the mind of the defendant and the police did no more than ‘afford an opportunity for the commission of a crime’ by a willing participant, then no entrapment occurred.” McCoy v. Commonwealth, 385 SE 2d 628 (Va. Ct App 1989).
What the heck are you talking about? Temptation is always used as an excuse for falling into sting attacks. That’s why police can’t go selling heroin on the streets to junkies and saying “gotcha!”. It’s only when sex is involved that people seem to suddenly forget about temptation.
“Do. Not. Touch.”
It’s not “hard to understand” at all. That’s like saying “What’s so hard for a fat person to understand, do not eat cake?”.
If a cop came up to me and said “Hey, you wanna buy some pot?”, I could see that as entrapment. Maybe. At least, it’s worthy of debate.
But if I went up to an undercover cop and said “Hey, you got some pot to sell?”, it’s a clear cut case of NOT entrapment.
As mentioned time and again, when reviewing the chat logs of the TCAP stuff, it’s clear that [nearly/unaminously all of] the suspects are the ones first suggesting the festivities.
On a personal note: I would like to respectfully request that you knock that off. It contributes nothing to the debate. You only piss people off, and that may induce them not to actually consider your arguments on their merits.
Does the number of sweeping statements you have made in this thread that have turned out to be utterly wrong bother you in the slightest? It seems to me that whether you acknowledge each error or, not, it doesn’t seem to shake your confidence in anything you’re saying or doing. No matter how many completely wrong statements you make, you confidently charge forward in the discussion.
Will there come some threshold at which you say to yourself, “Perhaps I don’t know as much about this subject as I thought?”
Okay, let me rephrase it for you. Persons under the age of consent (or kids, as most of us refer to them) tend towards precocious, reckless behavior. If an adult is tempted by an appealing person under the age of consent, he or she is likely to face humiliating, life-altering consquences. Temptation is neither a legal or moral excuse for causing harm to a young person. “But judge… I really *wanted *her…”
As for your paltry analogy: the consequences of too much cake are reversible and harm only the cake-eater. The consequences of statutory rape cause life-long anguish and harm to the predator and the kid, and the families of each.
I’m going to guess that you just didn’t get the message from your previous Warning, but posting this sort of schtick, implying that your opponent is mentally deficient, is not acceptable, either.
Setting aside the fact that “cake” is not the primary cause of obesity, yes, that is exactly what people say. Just as losing weight can be very very difficult, so (for some people) is not molesting kids. The difference is, one is against the law, and if you succumb to that temptation, you will go to jail.
A better example might, in fact, be heroin. Just because someone is addicted doesn’t meant hey can use drugs without facing consequences. An, arguably, they have a much better defense; drug use affects only the user, and is actually a medical reality. In contrast, being horny doesn’t really compare at all.
And, I hate to keep piling on with all the things you get wrong, but there is very little evidence that people who molest kids, especially adolescent or post-adolescent kids, have some sort of deep psychological problems. Many aren’t even true pedophiles or hebephiles; they are sociopaths who enjoy sex more when they are hurting or manipulating others. Assholes, in other words.
Well, given that (the link), that means there still isn’t a single example of anyone who was a victim of entrapment.
The sexual nature of the crime isn’t the sticking point - it’s that these people go looking for underage girls. The analogy to being offered drugs is flawed, because these men are not being offered illegal sex, they’re requesting it.
It’s like someone going to a site that might tell them where to get drugs, asking (repeatedly) where to get drugs, then driving to buy them, entering the house of the dealer and asking for drugs, but still claiming entrapment because the dealer never said no.
However the girls put themselves on display. I think it would be more like if a cop went around displaying cocaine and showing it as up for grabs.
Hmmm… yet again the US totally amazes me with the contempt it treats its own citizens.
Why don’t they go hanging around rehab centres offering the person’s poison? The people there can’t call the cops because hey, they are the cops. The cops in the US are way out of control. They are not what you’d expect in a first world country that alleges that its regime is better than so many foreign ones.
I think it is an excuse. People can’t help their biology. It’s at least as much a mitigating factor as many of the ones given up for murder.
The cake example was simply used as an example of the folly of considering that everyone is in completely control of themselves at all times.
Also, on an unrelated note, I would take issue with the claim that the consequences of too much cake are completely reversible. That cake that day could be the final nail in the coffin giving you diabetes, which you may have avoided from then on after a big change in your lifestyle. Excessive cake can also cause irreversible insulin resistance.
I didn’t say that. durrrr just means I think it’s obvious, though I guess an impolite way of saying it.
Again, the cake analogy was an example of how we aren’t always in control even if we desperately want to be.
He said “What is so hard to understand? Do. Not. Touch”, and I was using this as an example of how it’s not always so easy to do what you’re told, or even what you really, really want to yourself.
Males do get very strong urges sometimes. These men would almost all have certainly have gone to a woman aged 25+ if she kept asking them over etc. as well.
Well, I certainly don’t know much about the local laws in other countries, so perhaps you can educate me. What countries are you picturing where the reverse sting I described would not be legally permissible?
And once again I note you don’t explicitly acknowledge you were in error, instead deflecting the blame from you to the “out of control” United States police. Do you in fact understand that it’s perfectly legal, and not entrapment, for police in the United States to instigate reverse stings, and that these rules are made by legislatures and approved by the courts, not the police?
No - you said temptation was put in their way and they should have been able to resist, which I agree with. Thing is, temptation wasn’t even put in their way - it was worse than that.
Firstly, you have no way of knowing that, and in fact the evidence points quite strongly in the other direction. And, it has been established, repeatedly!, that the decoys do not, in fact, keep asking them over.
Secondly, I am continually amazed that you think I’m the misandrist here.