Sure. Suppose the police get wind you’ve been hired to kill some guy, and you’re planning to shoot him from across the street as he sits in his living room watching TV. So the police set up a mannequin in the TV chair and watch as you blow its head off.
You’re guilty of attempted murder.
Well Bricker already answered but I’ll try to elaborate. If the ultimate act you are trying to accomplish is a crime and you take enough steps to cross the nebulous legal threshold from mere preparation to attempt then you can be found guilty of attempt to commit that crime. The fact that some intervening factor such as the bank not being a real bank or the person you are trying to kill not really existing or the girl not really being underage are irrelevant.
While you cannot be guilty sex with a minor if you have sex with a girl you think is underage but really isn’t, you can be guilty of attempted sex with a minor. The same goes for murder. If you shoot into an empty building thinking there is someone in there but there really isn’t, with the intent to kill that non existent person you are guilty of attempted murder. However if your intention was merely to shoot into an empty building and it turns out there is someone in the building but they are not killed by your bullet, then you are not guilty of attempted murder. But if you did kill them you could be guilty of murder under a depraved indifference theory but I digress. There are obvious proof problems for the trial but we are talking about abstract legal concepts. In reality, absent rock solid proof of your intent a prosecutor would probably only charge you with negligent discharge of a fire arm. (in California) Which interestingly enough is a Strike under California’s three strikes law.
–Long list of caveats omitted out of laziness…
Does anyone know if its true that some of the people caught in the show was let go or pleaded to lesser counts because of the very challenges people listed in this thread?
This came up in another message board when one of the guys who was soliciting sex did not end up going to the girl’s house. The police then went to HIS house and tried to arrest him, resulting in the guy committing suicide. It was argued that because the guy did not follow through and go to the girl’s/FBI agent’s house, that no crime had been committed and the police or the show had to pay his family restitution
Now I’m not sure how true that is, but from that, someone mentioned that some of the men were aquitted of wrongdoing because the show’s producers didnt actually use real policemen to do the cyber chatting. Can anyone shed any light on this?
The *Tykarsky *case, cited above, cites two unpublished cases from the Western District of Missouri that hold an actual minor is required for a violation of the statute. Possibly there are some cases under state law that went the same way, at least at the trial court level.
And here is a case involving a guy who killed himself after the police pounded on his door based on an online sting: http://www.newsnet5.com/home-backup/10255330/detail.html
NBC settled the subsequent lawsuit: http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2008-06-25-predator-lawsuit_N.htm
I think that’s a slightly different scenario, though. In that case, the person you were hired to kill really exists, even if the actual attempt is diverted to a mannequin.
In the “To catch a predator” case, there’s no person you could point to as the intended victim of the crime if it had been executed successfully.
Not that this necessarily invalidates the law, but it is a more complicated issue than the analogy you gave.
Not quite the same thing, but I remember on one of those shows, two guys who had both been chatting up the synthelolita (or should that be faux-lita?) online showed up at the house, but the cops let one of them go on the spot because a review of the chat logs showed that he hadn’t said anything that unequivocally crossed the line into soliciting sex, and he claimed he was just coming along for the ride while his buddy met the girl.
yes - a better analogy would be if the cops stung a hit man by hiring him to kill a nonexistent person and then nabbed him when he attempted the hit (although I can’t imagine why the cops would let it go beyond the point of money changing hands).
At what point is intent formed? What’s the difference between a creep who likes to make arrangements with girls online (but never follows through), and one who shows up? Do authorities regularly go after people based only on online conversations with no followthrough?
Ok. Suppose you are a hit man. The police set up a sting where an undercover officer approaches you and asks you to kill his boss. He gives you a fake name, an address, and tells you the guy will be sitting in a chair watching tv and you should pull up in front of the house and blow him away with a rifle. You do so, only to be arrested when you pull up in front of the house with the gun.
You might have an entrapment defense, but entrapment is more complicated than most folks think. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=503&page=540 (Where the Government has induced an [503 U.S. 540, 549] individual to break the law and the defense of entrapment is at issue, as it was in this case, the prosecution must prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant was disposed to commit the criminal act prior to first being approached by Government agents.)
You are probably guilty of attempted murder. The fact that the victim didn’t exist isn’t relevant. The important thing is that you believed he did and tried to kill him.
Are there no perverts out there who DON’T mention the sex end of their interest during the instant messaging session?
I’ve no interest in the underage types, but back when I was single and met a couple of young ladies (college aged, at that point in my life) I certainly didn’t broach the idea of sex prior to the dinner and the movie part of the equation.
Do these investigators never meet the type of guys that DO want dates but DO NOT want to mention sex while instant messaging?
Or do they just not follow up on those guys… ?
I assume some of the guys they try to sting don’t bite, or just want to chat. But that doesn’t make good tv.
GFactor answers with his usual brilliance here.
Putting aside any laws which criminalize the specific act of offering to engage in sex with a minor online, we still have the general concept of attempt.
If an actual act is a crime, then typically the attempt to commit that act is also a crime. Your question is: what if a guy never intends to follow through? Does the mere act of making the arrangement constitute attempt?
Of course, in the “Dateline” cases, that’s usually not a consideration, because Chris Hansen nabs them after they’ve entered the decoy’s house; they obviously DID intend to make the meeting. But suppose we imagine a guy whose sole purpose is to arrange with some underage chat room user a clandestine meeting for the purpose of sex, and then sign off and go about his life. And suppose we picture he’s in a jurisdiction that has no law against that specific act of offering to engage in sex with a minor.
Is it a crime? I’m going to say ‘no.’
But keep reading – because the guy’s placing himself in a precarious position. It’s not an attempt crime because he had no intent to complete the crime. But we say that safely from the all-knowing perspective of the author of the hypothetical: we know what he’s thinking because we made him up. In real life, if the man were charged with the crime of attempt, a jury is entitled to assume that people intend the ordinary consequences of his actions. He could explain to the jury that he never intended to do anything. But if he was arrested ten minutes after the chat concluded, the jury might not believe his denials, and they might believe the words he typed in chat. In other words, there would probably be sufficient evidence to convict him if the jury found his explanations to be not credible.
Check’s in the mail. 
Better yet… what if you were a 14 year old boy pretending to be a hairy old man cruising for hairy old FBI agents pretending to be 14-year old girls?
This has probably happened.
It would be more than slightly amusing to see Chris Hansen’s reaction if the “pervert” who showed up at their “setup house” was actually a kid younger than their fake subject, complete with a face that won’t be able to support a mustache for at least another 5 years…
What if the guy makes an appointment to meet the minor on a day that he knows he will be out of town (or even better, out of the country), e.g. for business travel. Would that (plus some airline tickets or other proof that he will be out of town) constitute proof that he never intended to follow through with the meeting?
It would constitute evidence. The jury could rely on that evidence and believe him… or it could decide that he simply forgot about the business travel and fully intended to meet the youngster.
Actually, in that case, won’t the cop (pretending to be a 13-year old girl) who talked dirty and planned sex with the “pervert”, actually be violating the law, since he was actually soliciting a minor?
Even if the cop thought that the person he was IM’ing with was 40, shouldn’t he avoid being “reckless in that regard” (as one of the laws quoted above states) by finding a way to be extra sure that the “pervert” on the other side of the IM is not a 13-year old boy?
No, because he obviously has no intention of following through.
No. Cops are permitted to engage in acts that would otherwise be illegal while working undercover. A cop working a prostitution sting can agree to pay money for sex without being guilty, for instance.
How often do sting operations working both sides of the street end up busting each other?