I am trying to find out information on entrapment by south carolina police officers to arrest someone for prostitution based on online conversations between parties.
If anyone has the answers to these questions, it would be appreciated.
1- can a police officer ask you for specific sex online?
2-can a police officer send you e-mails after the agreement to meet?
3-how far can an officer go to entrap you, and what cant they say?
Thank you for your time
IANAL, or even an American, but the overwhelming majority of threads I’ve come across on the subject of entrapment seem to reach the conclusion that it’s bollocks of the highest grade. Essentially, it was invented by Hollywood because it makes for a good story.
The thing they aren’t allowed to do is entice you to commit a crime, but they can certainly ask you for all sorts of illegal favours, and you always have the option to not commit a crime, therefore avoiding punishment.
Entrapment, generally, means to be coerced by police to do something that one normally wouldn’t do. Yes a police officer can ask for sex online, it’s up to the citizenry (by that I mean you) to refuse it if it’s illegal. I don’t understand questions 2 and 3, for those you’d best ask a lawyer as we don’t dispense specific legal advice here.
Police officers undercover don’t have a ‘secret code’ like teenage ne’erdowell’s* think like “Cops can’t lie.” or “They have to tell you they’re a cop if you ask.” or “They can’t do drugs or they can be prosecuted.” In sting operations they will do anything and everything a real criminal would do in the same situation. If you’re caught selling drugs, for example, even though it’s illegal to buy them police involved won’t get arrested for doing a drug sting.
*The punks in high school I hung out with spouted this nonsense for years, glad I never had to find out the hard way
Need answer fast?
Or bail?
In the end, there’ll be some sort of in-person meeting if they are going to arrest you; I’ve always maintained a cynical attitude about the whole thing, because once there’s not a text log of your encounter, it’ll his word against yours.
Having said that, I’ve spent some time in the online flesh trade, and I just try to protect myself by never agreeing to any illegal trade of services for money. Some people understand when I say “I can’t offer sex for money, of course! That’d be illegal! ;)” And some people are thickheaded and run away confused.
His word plus the tape and video recorder that would be likely components of a sting operation.
Actually, this is an interesting sideline discussion. Prior to Lawrence v. Texas, same-sex sodomy was presumptively illegal… therefore offering to engage in same-sex sodomy was illegal. Of course, so was opposite-sex sodomy. But police would typically charge female prostitutes with the misdemeanor of soliciting for prostitution, and males cruising public parks, etc., with attempted sodomy, a felony. This created the oddball circumstance that offering to do it for free exposed you to worse criminal liability than offering to do it for money; adding the money dropped you to a misdemeanor, at least in practice.
Thankfully, that disparity is now pretty much a thing of the past.
I was under the impression, and I could be wrong, that if the police officer actually asked you to pay him/her for sex, then that was entrapment. The undercover officer had to make chit chat small talk and wait for you to actually mention sex for money. The officer could say “Do you want a date?” or “Wanna have fun tonight?” or anything legal. He/she could even lie to you and say that she was not a cop, etc, but he/she had to let the client propose the exchange for money.