OK, this is inspired by a movie (I Want to Live! to be specific). Anyway, so a cop is going to arrest a guy in a hotel room in the early 1950s for transporting Susan Hayward across state likes for immoral purposes, in violation of the Mann Act. Well, Susan pipes up and points out that she’s paying for the room, which somehow means the situation has turned from a federal beef on the guy to a misdemeanor on Susan. The misdemeanor isn’t specified but based on a later recitation of Susan’s criminal record it seems to be solicitation. Why would who pays for the room have anything to do with whether the guy violated the Mann Act?
There was a scientist working on life extension, who hit upon a formula that could keep an organism alive indefinitely. The species he tested it on were all cetaceans like dolphins and porpoises. One of the crucial ingredients could only be extracted from seagulls. So the scientist had to keep going out and buying more gulls and bringing them back to thelab.
One day as he was about to enter the lab building, he found the way blocked by two lions escaped from the zoo, lying down in front of the entrance. He observed that the lions were not dangerous, as they were too lazy to do anything but lie there. So he carefully stepped over them carrying his birds.
Right then the FBI showed up and arrested him on a charge of transporting gulls across staid lions for immortal porpoises.
:smack:
…and I deplore the Mann Act as lending itself to a dreadful pun, the revenge that the Gods of Semantics take against tight-zippered Philistines. I am your father, and I am speaking English, and I love you.
But seriously, the impression I get is that her paying for the room exculpates the man (at least partially) from the whole “knowingly persuade, induce, entice, or coerce, or cause to be persuaded, induced, enticed, or coerced, or aid or assist in persuading, inducing, enticing or coercing” bit, since the situation now presents itself as the girl seducing or soliciting the man instead.
But those clauses are independent. All that’s necessary is that she be transported for an “immoral purpose.”
OK, seriously, folks. I once read a piece written circa 1938 by the author Louis Adamic titled “Girl on the Road” (I think). He was driving on the highway in Pennsylvania or someplace and picked up a tough young hitchhiker. When he asked her name, she sneered, “Mrs. Wally Simpson!” When deciding whether it was a wise idea to give her a ride, he considered how some women were said to hitchhike across state lines to extort money from lone male motorists. They would threaten to call the cops and sic the Mann Act on the victim unless he paid up. Adamic worried this would turn out to be a “Mann Act racketeer.” He gave her a ride, he wrote down all the stuff she told him about fleeing a broken home, and she didn’t try to extort. I don’t know if this helps any toward answering the OP.
:::bump:::
Anyone?
I’m going to guess that who pays for the room was used to determine who was transporting whom, and that it would be much more difficult to prove that the man was transporting a woman if the woman was paying the man’s way.
Or, it could have been a loophole that existed wholly in the imaginations of the screenwriters.
I haven’t seen the film.
I was going to point out that the Act has been amended since the 1950s, but the version that you linked to appears to be the one applicable then. Here is a history of Mann Act Amendments: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002421----000-notes.html
Without knowing more, I don’t think the argument would work. At most, it makes her a co-conspirator, and by the 1950s it was established law that that the transported female could be a conspirator. http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/crm02027.htm