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Sex Offender Claims Police Entrapped Him With Animated Emoticons
60-year-old John Jacques has appealed his conviction for engaging in sexually graphic online conversations with a police officer posing as a 13-year-old girl, saying the police entrapped him using animated emoticons during the chats. From the article: "Jacques claims prosecutors withheld evidence when they failed to use a computer program that would have shown the jury animated emoticons, which he argued was 'clear evidence of enticement.' He doesn't support his argument with a legal basis, the appeals court found. 'We fail to see how viewing the emoticons as animations would have led the jury to conclude that he was the victim of excessive incitement,' the court wrote."
eom
Nullius in verba
He was sexually attracted to the emoticons, not the girl.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Awesome mustache and his name is John Jacques. This man is clearly a french buccaneer from the 1700-1800's. At that time it was common practice to sleep with 13. Not his fault.
Good luck with that. You should also tell them how the mean and tricksy the police are for saying "Hey, I'm a 13-year-old girl" when they -really weren't-. Gasp. You were suckered right into soliciting sexually graphic conversations, they practically haxxored your Gibson with such coercion like "Hey, I'm a kid" and "I think Spongebob is great."
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
;)
At first I read it and I was like O.o
Then I went :P
And finally I did a :D
That's why I always turn emoticons off in chat—you never know what's on the other end.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
What the hell kind of emoticons were they using???? (and where can I get them...)
Fact is, even if the evidence wouldn't change the jury's mind, the court may have been wrong to suppress it, violating his right to due process.
Stupid prosecutors and judges are how shitbirds like this walk free.
Well if the emotion was big glittery text saying "LET'S FUCK!!" then yeah, maybe. But somehow I doubt it.
60-year-old John Jacques has appealed his conviction for engaging in sexually graphic online conversations with a police officer posing as a 13-year-old girl
Explicit conversations with people under 18 are illegal? And can get you on the sex offender list?
Am I the only one who sees that as rather ridiculous?
This defense is like saying "She got me horny, then said she was 14. Then after repeatedly asking me to do it, and humping the air, I did it anyway". Nice tale, you still made the decision to have sex with a child. You lose, and you need help. The only defense you get is if you never actually touched a child. This being the case, you should get help. If, however, you did not just talk about these things, the other inmates will take care of you just right.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
I'm Chris hansen What are you doing hear?
Yes, this guy is probably guilty and belongs behind bars. No, it probably wouldn't make a difference to show animated emoticons. But that's not the point. The point is that he was convicted by a jury of his peers when that jury was shown evidence that differed from what was actually the case. In essence, the evidence was tampered with. It shouldn't be up to a judge to decide if that is a material difference, it should be up to the jury to decide. They were deprived of that choice, and all judgements that followed from that point on should be considered null and void.
Yeah, it will cost the taxpayer money to have a retrial. But that money is worth it to ensure the integrity of the justice system. If you care so much, take it out of the salary of the person that fucked up the evidence.
On a side note, I think it's pretty despicable that this was filed under "idle", as if we are supposed to point and laugh at the stupid defence. This goes right to the heart of how we are supposed to enact justice, it's not a laughing matter. I'd rather the guy went free than we jailed him on the basis of faulty evidence. The moment we decide it's okay to skip due process when we're "sure" of guilt, we give up the foundation of modern justice and undo centuries of civilisation.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Mr Clippy always gave me a boner.
Have gnu, will travel.
Haven't sexual predators figured out that "they were asking for it" doesn't work as a defense regardless of how prudish the judge and jury might be?
... if he didn't get nailed by "a police officer posing as a 13-year-old girl" . . . he would probably be hitting on a real 13-year-old girl . . . claiming that he was 14. Sorry, Jacques, "No sympathy (or soup) for you!"
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
diddler.
I mean really, you can't tell me that when you this guy that isn't the first thing that pops to mind?
I don't know how many times I've heard people talk about how "The cops offered him xxx, it was entrapment!" IANAL, but my understanding is that entrapment requires duress of some kind (cop tells you to go buy drugs or he'll break your legs, and then arrests you for buying drugs) or overt trickery where you lack any intent (cop sells you a toaster filled with drugs even though you genuinely thought you were just buying a toaster). Merely offering something comes nowhere near the legal baseline for entrapment. This guy's "defense" would be like a drug user saying "But the guy told me it was like really, really, really good stuff, and that he loved it himself, so it sounded so good I had to have it too".
(as an aside, even though I used drug laws as an example, I personally don't agree with most of the drug laws that are on the books)
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
"We fail to see how viewing the emoticons as animations would have led anyone to conclude that he was the victim of excessive incitement to engage in sexually graphic online conversations with what he thought was a 13-year-old girl" the court should have wrote.
Grammar nazis are to this community what excrements are to gold.
it was probably a printed transcript, which can't be animated. Are you also saying that photographs should be inadmissible, since they aren't animated? Not to mention that they're 2D and only contain a limited frame.
Really now... using "a computer to facilitate a child sex crime"? Let's work back here. Was there a child? Was there any sex? What exactly was facilitated? Oh, but he used a computer! Gotcha.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
There are no women on the internet and every underage girl is an FBI agent.
While these are not always true, it's a good idea to assume they are.
And on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.
http://chrisabraham.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/nobodyknowsyoureadogontheinternet.jpg
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BMO
There's no reason why they can't show animations to the jury. If the reason was that it was printed, then it was a mistake to print it instead of showing it on a screen.
I'm not complaining that they weren't animated because I value animation. I'm complaining that the jury were misled. Everybody understands that photographs don't tell the whole story. Not everybody understands that a printed transcript may not accurately replicate what the guy was reading.
Look at it this way: if he'd sent an animated GIF to somebody he knew was epileptic to intentionally cause a seizure, would you be okay with the jury being shown a print out of the first frame of the GIF showing a smiley face and the jury being told "hey, he just sent a picture of a smiley face"?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
There is always a balance between ensuring citizens have due process, and also due justice. There is no reason to make prosecutions of one single sex offendor cost millions of dollars because every stupid little detail _might_ matter. Similarly you can't push someone through a kangaroo court because its economical. In this case the appeals court did its job, and said that it wouldn't have mattered, and the guy got a chance to make his complaint, just not to the jury, but the law wasn't broken. Sounds like another win for society.
Apparently the cop forgot to use his [imreallyacop] emoticon, I can see why he felt entrapped, those pixels are just irresistible. /sarcasm
______ Eagles may fly but monkeys don't get sucked into jet engines.
Yes, this guy is probably guilty and belongs behind bars. No, it probably wouldn't make a difference to show animated emoticons. But that's not the point. The point is that he was convicted by a jury of his peers when that jury was shown evidence that differed from what was actually the case. In essence, the evidence was tampered with. It shouldn't be up to a judge to decide if that is a material difference, it should be up to the jury to decide. They were deprived of that choice, and all judgements that followed from that point on should be considered null and void.
Actually, the judge gets to decide what evidence is relevant and admissable to begin with. So also, judges get to decide whether overlooked/suppressed/incorrect evidence could possibly be sufficient to change a verdict. Nothing inherently wrong with that--while I personally think great care should be taken to give the defendant the benefit of any doubt, some mistakes are just obviously too minor to have had any influence on the jury...
Unless the animated emoticon said, "I....AM....REALLY....A....POLICE....OFFICER....AND....I....WANT....TO.....MEET....YOU....FOR....SEX....AND....WATCH....YOUR....PORN", there is nothing in that claim that would have kept him from sending porn to and arranging to have sex with what he thought was a 13 year-old girl.
This was not a miscarriage of justice, and was not taking shortcuts with the law. Even if we accept that this was one I that wasn't dotted, or one T that wasn't crossed, there is no way that it would have changed the outcome. The rest of the evidence was more than enough to compensate for that trivial error.
I'm 12 years old and what is this?
Do you people even read the articles?
#1) He provided graphic images of himself
#2) They arrested him at a fast food restaurant where he had arranged to have a "sleep over" with who he thought was a 13-year-old girl
It's not like all they did was chat and he spanked it on the other end because the girl was being suggestive. Whether winkies enticed him in to physically going in to a situation where he would have been in direct contact with a minor with sexual intentions is irrelevant because this is something you just DON'T FUCKING DO.
...if I don't get to see the emoticons?
Was it the wanking banana?
Anyone have a link?
...if there were any animated icons, he put them there himself or picked the theme himself or they were the default theme.
I know of no chat client that sends actual animated graphics over the interbutt. They are all locally stored and used when the chat program successfully greps an ascii smiley and substitutes for it.
They are *his* *own* *emoticons*
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BMO
...to my own posting. He was found guilty of "felony use of a computer to facilitate a child sex crime". That was on top of the previous offences, child pornography and everything else.
Further articles (and further offences) about the same person;-
http://lacrossetribune.com/news/article_b53c4ad3-7a27-5791-bb48-770cced5037b.html
http://lacrossetribune.com/news/article_02f1700c-36e5-5f88-b7b2-426ed40d3d22.html
http://lacrossetribune.com/news/article_25b66060-41a2-5c07-ba82-22a6f1f1c40a.html
I'm surprised he didn't get hit with an even longer sentence for a 'frivolous appeal' - coz that could certainly have happened to him if he'd tried this in the UK.
IANAL but I've always questioned the core illegality of being caught in a sting that isn't *really* illegal. By that I mean, he wasn't really engaging in a conversation with a 13 year old. All he actually did was talk dirty to an adult. Same with drug busts with fake cocaine or whatever. Have I truly committed a crime if I exchange a suitcase full of cash for bags of sugar?
Another problem I have is who these guys are catching. I watched a lot of To Catch a Predator and, while some guys seemed like Predators with a capital 'P', most of them seemed like total losers who figured they'd hit pay dirt for the first time in their lives ("omg a girl wants to have sex with me!"). Most were either really awkward or borderline mental cases. Are those the guys we're concerned about? I'm worried about the manipulators sophisticated enough to groom their victims; not send a JPG of their penis 2 minutes into an online conversation and then think they're going to get laid.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Exactly. Does it have to be shown in the same font he read it in, too? No, because that isn't material to the case.
Someday a defense lawyer will be able to prove that almost all the "kids hot for sex" on the Internet are not kids.
At that point he'll be able to credibly claim that his client's goal was to see the look on an adult's face when another adult showed up pretending to be interested in sex with a kid.
Once about 80-90% of "horny kids" online are not kids, judges will have no choice but to admit this into evidence and REQUIRE that the prosecution prove that the defendant is lying and that the defendant really did expect a kid to be there.
This will be especially true in cases where the defendant ONLY chatted up the policeman-pretending-to-be-a-kid and said he was coming over for sex but never showed. In a world where 80-90% of "online horny kids" are adults, NOT showing up is strong evidence that you were in it for the lulz rather than sex.
What I expect to happen a lot sooner:
Some edgy newspaper will, with the approval of their lawyers, go online and hit up "kids" online and then report each and every kid to the local family protective service authority or local cops. The local cops will have to take the time to double-check with the feds and state cops to make sure it's not a sting, chewing up valuable tax dollars in the process. Sooner or later there will be a mis-communication and family protective services or the local cops will "bust" an FBI agent.
I wonder how soon before we cross that 80-90% threshold, if we haven't done so already. I hope someday the "pretend" rate gets to 100%, because that will mean there are 0 horny kids out there chatting up adults for sex in Internet chat rooms.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Well, gee, I hope they get the font right next time. And make sure its the same tone of magenta as he uses on his chat program. And get a monitor calibrated to match the settings of his own. In fact, the whole jury should have to dogpile onto his chair in front of his computer, in his house, just so it matches the evidence precisely.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Welcome to the Internet: where the men are men, the women are men, and the 13-year-old girls are FBI agents.
Is being in trouble for conversing with a fictional character.
I always assume that someone who says they're 13 is either a cop or a fat guy in a basement. Real 13 year olds pretend they're older.
[lawyer voice]
But what about reall 11 year olds? What age do they pretend to be?
[dramatic pause while my co-counsel whispers in my ear].
I've just been informed that real 11 year olds aren't allowed to use the Internet. I withdraw the question.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Millions of real kids are on the internet now. 10, 11, 12 year olds on facebook, and tons of other websites. These kids have clueless parents, and are allowed to do whatever they want. And more and more kids online every day.
Where the men are men.
The women are men.
And the 13 year old girls are cops.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
The jury was not misled.
If those icons were animated, it's because he put them there himself. Go ahead, name a chat client that sends and receives actual graphical animated emoticons. I'll wait right here.
Done looking? Didn't find one, did you? That's because they're all stored locally as themes. He either picked the theme, created his own, installed a theme, or it was the default theme. The police did not send him any animated icons.
He's lying.
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BMO
* Sending, receiving, offering to send or receive, or attempting to send or receive child pornography, including asking for pornographic self-photos from someone you believe is a minor
* Sending, receiving, or offering to send or receive or attempting to send or receive obscene materials
* Sending pornography to someone who you believe is a minor.
* Making plans to meet someone you believe is underage for illegal purposes. Under 16 and more than 4 years apart is pretty much automatically illegal, 16 and 17 vary by circumstances.
Although the state should have to prove "state of mind" the reality is that there is a legal presumption that if a cop consistently claims he is a 13 year old girl then anyone communicating with him believes they are talking to a 13 year old girl. As long as we live in a world where the number of real 13 year old girls in such chat rooms is a majority of people claiming to be 13 year old girls or even a significant minority of them are really 13 year old girls, this legal presumption makes sense and I for one support it. Once the number of real 13 year old girls drops off or the number of cops and other adults pretending to be 13 year old girls goes way up then this legal presumption will fall flat, as it should. After all, if I'm horny for cops pretending to be 13 year old girls and I go to a chat room where I know 9 out of 10 "13 year old girls" are cops, well, I'm a consenting adult and so is the cop, so no law should prevent me from hitting up a cop if that's my intent and I'm doing so in a chat room where I'm much more likely to find a cop than a real 13 year old girl.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Call me crazy, but I'd take due process over due justice any day. I'm not comfortable with there being any balance between the two at all. I'd imagine I'd feel that way all the more strongly if I ever wound up in court. Injustice is always wrong, and it's not something I ever want to see our government involved in. Even if it's in the name of "justice".
Porn leads to masturbation.
Masturbation leads to blindness.
'nuff said.
Now pardon me for a bit while I update my screen-reader software.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Turn on your screen-reader and HEAR me spell boob: B O B
This is what happens when you post to slashdot after going blind from looking at too much porn :(.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Yes, people are perverts, end of story.
Put a message saying your a horny 13 year old girl who loves big daddies spanking her bottom, and 9 out of 10 guys will answer something nauty without even flinching, until after they hit the send button and realized that the emoticons and the talk and all the rest was null and void as soon as the age appeared at below 18. I am not sure (DIDNT RTA) but I am positive the officer did say he/she was 13, and at that moment is when the cut off should happen, but most skip or skim lines reading and just catch the pop ups of graphics, and go to the next post....I bet i could get that same officer to be on the stand and become the pervert because if i send 20 messages quickly one after another on MSN, you do not get enough time to read them all, and the line which gets skipped quickly might be the one holding that info about the age.....so I can see how entrapment could have been the guys claim, although I think just too much horniness is more the problem here, if you are going to your computer to solve your sex issues (or lack of), then I guess you are playing russian roulette.
this guy is probably guilty and belongs behind bars
This guy is obviously not guilty; he chatted with an adult, there was no 13 year old girl so in any _justice_ system he's as innocent as can be.
However, his moustache leads me to believe that putting him behind bars may be a good idea anyway:P
0x or or snor perron?!
The appellate standard is whether the error would have swayed the jury.
I almost subscribed to you to see your law posts, but you didn't seem to have a bunch. You are correct in a defense-lawyery, law-studenty way. If your entire case is going to be this guy reading stuff from a computer and typing stuff back, it's probably important to display what the user saw using the software he was using. However, his argument is not reasonable (not saying that this is a reasonableness test). Emoticons are displayed in very predictable ways :) = *picture of a smiley face*. He would have to come up with a serious argument for why those emoticons enticed him. It should pass a common sense test.
There is nowhere in America where a 30- or 60-year-old man can have sex with a 14 year old "young lady" unless they are married.
There are some states with generous "Romeo and Juliet" laws.
Two decades ago several states had ages of consent below 16, including one with an age of consent of 12, but only for girls and only if they weren't virgins before they had sex with you. At least one other state had an age of consent of 14.
Internationally very few countries have an age of consent lower than 14.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Then you get labeled non-cooperative and your silence is used against you.
That's what they want you to believe, at least.
It's one of the tricks they use to get people to talk themselves into confessing, even to things they haven't done. Watch any episode of Law and Order and watch how frustrated the detectives get when their suspects clam up.
The only thing you should say to them is that you will not talk to them without your lawyer.
Watch a law professor tell you why.
Nobody has ever talked themselves out of a crime. Don't talk to the police.
Putting moderation advice in your
If you have a sexually explicit conversation with a consenting adult who is pretending to be a child, that is illegal (because of your intent).
If you have a sexually explicit conversation with a child who is pretending to be an adult, that is also illegal (because of the act).
So basically, any sexually explicit conversations online could ruin your life, because you simply don't know who you are talking to.
That seems wrong to me.
Would you say it was OK and shouldn't be a criminal offense if it was a 60-year old pervert sending your 13-year old daughter pornographic videos and telling her all the things he wanted to do to her?
Depends:
If he believed she was 13 or anywhere close, hell no it's not okay.
If he believed she was a cop posing as a 13 year old and was doing it for lulz then I'd ground my daughter from the computer, get her any counseling she needs, congratulate her on being able to pass herself off as a cop pretending to be 13, and in private probably laugh my ass, er, arse off.
However, if the chat room had more than a very small percentage of real kids I'd insist that he be charged with reckless endangerment of a minor - a less serious charge. Even if he THOUGHT he was dealing with a cop it's reckless to throw porn around in a chat room where you are likely to run into minors.
Oh, in any case I'd insist that the guy pay for my kid's counseling.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Ignore this. Apparently MSN proves me wrong.
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BMO
By default MSN messenger has animated emoticons, the wink ";)" actually winks at you. it is however sending in the background another character, not even ";)"
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The "social" age of adulthood, or manhood in male-dominated societies, is pretty much 18 in the USA and most other Western societies. This is the age when a person is responsible for his own actions and can sign contracts, vote, and do the other things adults can do. I say "pretty much" because the reality is we phase in adulthood over several years. In America it's typically phased in over the 16-21 age range, with 16 being the age where you can do most non-hazardous jobs and get a driver's license and 21 the age where you can buy alcohol and hold most public offices.
1500 years ago the age of adulthood was significantly lower.
Oh, in ancient cultures that valued female virginity, it was generally frowned upon to have sex with a woman or girl not your wife.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Lol, I hope that was cut and paste, cause otherwise it was a
ridiculous waste of time and resources to type.
...to go on. No minor was harmed. In fact, the minor didn't exist. And setting a trap? Don't we call this shit trolling here on the internet? And isn't it almost universally reviled? Yet the police do it and we cheer for the trollee's demise. I mean if you get past the knee jerk that OMG HES A SEX OFFENDER BURN HIM ARRRRR, the same BS being used here to arrest and jail a person could be used to arrest and jail almost any of us for things we do. It might seem a bit of arm waiving and knee jerking on my part but this doesn't seem all that far from a Minority Report-esque scenario. No real crime actually committed, but you still get locked up as though you did. Sitting around and going "But he's a sex offender man, and "what if" there really was a girl?" What if indeed. Do we *really* need to be going down that slippery slope? "What if" cuts every way, and can be applied to everyone.
I think that describes the author's existence from birth until death.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Look, if you're up on charges in front of a jury there is something like a 90% (or more?) chance you're going to be found guilty.
So none of that other stuff really matters. If you're charged with a crime then that's it for you, bye-bye.
Its the Betty Rubble/Lois Griffin defense. "I was enticed by the cartoon." I suppose it could be Anime that got him all stiff and uncomfortable, but it was less than that: the smiley faces and whatnot.
Someday a defense lawyer will be able to prove that almost all the "kids hot for sex" on the Internet are not kids.
I don't think you need to go that far. No one can be guilty of a crime that was not committed.
Suppose the police catches someone sitting in a car in front of a bank holding a gun. Can they arrest him for robbing the bank? In this case it wasn't even a true bank, only a building with a sign saying "Bank" but with no money inside.
It's not a crime to feel sexually attracted to a 13-year-old, it's not a crime to chat with an adult that pretends to be a minor.
The correct approach for the police in this case would be to watch the guy. Get a warrant to search his house, computer, and internet activity, monitor his phone and internet connections, follow him, etc. Wait until he tries to contact a true child. Otherwise, he is just someone making fun at a guy who pretends to be a 13-year-old girl. There's no crime in that.
If he has the resources to go all the way, I'm willing to bet the case will be dismissed.
If she was interfering with other customers I would've banned her outright.
If she started PM'ing people with talk like that I would've k-lined or g-lined her if I could.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
No, that's not what I understand or has been explained to me, that it actually sends the .gif. Not ascii, not unicode, the actual picture.
There are unicode emoticons. Be afraid.
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BMO
But the judge can't decide what parts of one piece of evidence come and go. It would be like saying "Ok, these letters from the defendant's journal can come in--these other ones go out." But then the letters that remain say "I killed John Smith" when the original passage was about gardening. Or a slightly less extreme example, a conversation in which the words "I did it" were uttered; then only that phrase, with no context, is introduced.
Either the entire conversation comes in, unedited, or it goes out. I don't know what effect the emoticons could have, but I don't want prosecutors to have the ability to edit evidence.
That's exactly why they read you the Miranda warning before asking you any questions
So, this means that, like everything else, being "on the internet" makes it different?
I don't suppose the police told this guy "everything you say can be used against you in a court of law, hello, I'm a 13-year-old girl, do you wanna chat?"
Transcripts of the chats given to the jury showed only static blushing smiley face emoticons the officer sent Jacques after he provided graphic images of himself.
Amusing how judges, attorneys and other jurists all believe they are psychologists.
There is no emoticon to express my outrage at this story!
Please go back and read my comment again, you obviously didn't do it properly the first time. You seem to be under the impression that I think this is not a trivial, inconsequential error, and you are arguing otherwise. We agree on this point. I do think this is a trivial, inconsequential error. My point is that it's the jury's responsibility to decide that, and the jury's opinion of this that matters in the eyes of justice. Your opinion on whether this is an important difference doesn't matter. Mine doesn't matter. The judge's doesn't matter. It was the jury's responsibility to make that decision and it was taken out of their hands by somebody who tampered with the evidence.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Right, because doing any of that would change the fact that the guy committed a crime.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
What would happen if someone posed as a pedo to lure dumbass teens to a park to teach them a lesson about having sex with pedos? That would be a much more interesting show.
Well, gee, I hope they get the font right next time. And make sure its the same tone of magenta as he uses on his chat program. And get a monitor calibrated to match the settings of his own.
My point exactly.
In fact, the whole jury should have to dogpile onto his chair in front of his computer, in his house, just so it matches the evidence precisely.
For total accuracy, shouldn't they also have to stroke their wieners and fondle their balls while they watch the emoticons?
Wrong.
In the justice system in which he was tried it is entirely legal to set someone up in a sting operation and mislead the suspect until they break the law (even though technically they he didn't break it, he clearly intended to do so).
Cops can set you up, sell you drugs, even use them with you (at least in this state) and you still go to jail for breaking the law and they don't. When there intent is to catch the bad guys, it doesn't matter that the misled you as long as you knowingly broke the law.
They can't tell you 'I'm a cop and its legal to smoke crack with me' and then put you in jail. They can say 'want to hit the crack pipe and rape this 12 year old? No, I'm not a cop' and if you agree to it, they can put you in jail.
You don't get out of the punishment for a crime just because you got duped into being caught. Sorry, reality is entirely different from your fantasy land. If you don't want to get caught commiting a crime ... DON'T COMMIT THE CRIME.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Sorry, meant to reply to OP, not you.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Well then were's the justice? Oh there's none. So it's obviously not a justice system but a mislead-and-lock-up system.
0x or or snor perron?!
I call bullshit.
I am a cop and I have had training on the subject and worked with officers whom have run chat room stings (I've not worked one myself).
If the events transpired as you indicate then:
A> The person you were chatting with was not a cop.
B> The person you were chatting with was a cop, but shouldn't be because he's a FUCKING MORON.
Oh, and please read up on just what constitutes entrapment. What you describe is enticement, constitutional (if only just), and legal.
"You can see I know very little about pimp policy." George McGovern.
Nobody said that. You are arguing against a straw man, not me.
They really aren't. For instance, some badly-written software, to put smileys into a message, switches to the Wingdings font, which has a smiley face at (if memory serves) the codepoint reserved for the letter P, then puts the letter 'P' into the text and switches back to the original font. End result for people with that font installed = smiley. End result for people without that font installed = the letter P. I've seen flamewars kick off due to this because it totally changed the tone of what somebody was saying.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
... I personally think great care should be taken to give the defendant the benefit of any doubt...
How the hell do you get "benefit of any doubt" from "innocent until proven guilty"?
I came here hoping to see some good pervy emoticons. Gravely disappointed. Guess I'll have to stick with good ol'
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
For example, simply peeing in public, in some states, is enough to have you arrested and classified as a sexual predator.
The mod-up to +4, "Insightful" demands, I think, some minimal show of proof that what you say is true.
Below is the public registry for New York state, searchable by name, county or zip code. It is restricted to Level 2 and 3 offenders.
Level 2 registrants remain on the list for 20 years, Level 3 for life.
The rap sheet typically includes the age of the victim, the charges on which the registrant was convicted, aggravating circumstances, and conditions of release.
For example:
Victim, female. 12 yrs old
Force used:
Choked
Threat
Hit with hand/fist/club
Search Public Registry of Sex Offenders
15 years is too much for non existing crime. What if he figured out that he's talking to cops? That could be possible to prove, he just needs to reinterpret his words on the court.
Besides if a teenager wants to have s*x with older guy/woman, she/he will still manage to find a way. Or become a sex offender (I guess there are cops looking for that,too cause christian fundamentalist lobbies wiwh to punish the child too for having sex "prematurely").
It doesn't send a "picture"; it sends bits and bytes. Ones and zeros. So what does it matter whether the bits and bytes that it sends are an actual .gif? According to some encoding scheme, the ones and zeros represent the animated winking emoticon; obviously they can't be displayed raw. The user doesn't see binary; they see how it's decoded.
How the animated image is represented in the actual binary that's transmitted isn't what is important; it doesn't matter whether the ones and zeros compose a .gif, a certain Unicode character, or an ASCII sequence such as ;) ... what matters is the default way it's displayed to the user.
On a purely pedantic level, the guy has a point - the same point he'd have if the prosecutors had, say, exhibited printed network packet dumps in hexadecimal as their evidence instead of the printed chat logs. However, hex packet dumps would be completely illegible to the judge/jury; printed chat logs are legible, and so the question becomes whether or not the fact that the emoticons were animated bears any significant meaning that would prevent someone from accurately deciding whether or not the guy is guilty of what he was being accused of. I think that his point was at least worthy of consideration; however, not worthy of much consideration. It shouldn't take much consideration to conclude that the fact that the emoticons were animated is not significant enough to argue that he was entrapped, and that the judge/jury had a good enough representation of the evidence to make a valid ruling. So no, he is only grasping at straws - real straws, but these straws don't break any camel's backs. He should get no mistrial and no re-trial over this.
Nobody has ever talked themselves out of a crime. Don't talk to the police.
You are innocently charged with rape. They arrest you after 5PM. The cops say they have DNA and say "we can clear this all up in a couple of hours if you give us a DNA sample."
As far as you know the police having your DNA won't get you into trouble for anything you've done in the past. You also know that your state legislature passed a law recently allowing destruction of the DNA sample and arrest record when you are cleared.
Do you submit now or spend the night in jail waiting for your lawyer?
If you suspect the cops are crooked or lying about the 2-hour timeframe, you wait.
If you don't, it's a case of which is more annoying:
1) Spending the night in jail, avoiding the DNA test, and still having to get a lawyer to get your arrest record expunged.
2) Taking the DNA test, going home in 2 hours, hoping you are right about your DNA not being at any actual crime scenes, and still having to get a lawyer to get your arrest record AND DNA test expunged.
For a lot of people #2 is less annoying.
Now pretend it's a Friday at 3PM and the cops truthfully say "if we have your DNA before 4PM we can have you out tonight, otherwise we'll have to wait until the lab opens back up at 8AM Monday and you'll spend the weekend in jail." Suddenly the balance-of-annoyance changes.
Oh, there is one more factor:
In some states that allow expungement of arrest and related records for non-pursued charges, either the statute of limitations has to run out, the speedy-trial clock has to run out, or the case against you has to be dismissed with prejudice. If the speedy-trial clock is 90 days and the case isn't pro-actively dismissed, your DNA better not show up on any crime scene during those 90 days.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Without treatment, sex-offender recidivism is well below 50%. I've seen a wide range of OVERALL recidivism including people who have had sex-offender therapy and those who have not and the average over 10+ years seems to be in the 20-30% range with the bulk of that early on after release or discharge.
I've seen many studies that show a significant but not eye-popping benefit for sex-offender therapy - something along the order of reducing recidivism by 1/5 to 1/3 of what it would have been - if a given person was a "30% risk" of committing a new sex crime over the next 10 years w/o treatment, you could expect that with treatment this risk goes drops to low as 20%. If his initial risk was 20%, then it likely drops to about 13%, and so on. Of course, every case is individual and some people's risk will drop from whatever to zero with treatment, others won't change at all.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Personally, I think there is some genetic component to pedophilia, at least in most cases.
There's also a genetic component to anger, some forms of sociopathic behavior, and some mental illnesses that affect judgment and self-control.
We don't "treat" homosexuality try to prevent homosexual sexual behavior because it's not harmful to others outside of a spiritual sense, and a person's spiritual well-being is their own business not society's. We as a society don't "treat" heterosexuality to try to prevent heterosexual sexual behavior among consenting adults either, although we do try to prevent teenagers from having sex and I hope the Roman Catholic Church has a program to help those who have taken vows of celibacy to live by them if they feel sexual attractions to women.
Adults having sex with kids or adults more than a few years older than under-aged teenagers having sex with them is generally harmful emotionally and, for intercourse with someone who isn't physically developed, physically. For this reason society needs to discourage it. In some cases, such as adults having penetrative with prepubescent kids where the adult penetrates whatever is between the legs front or back, this needs to be discouraged with extreme prejudice. Ditto any case that leaves the kid or underage teenager thinking he didn't have the complete freedom to say no whether or not penetration happened.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Anonymous Coward writes:
New stuff is appearing left and right, the underground networks run much deeper and safer than the scene or any other wannabes...
Please send whatever evidence you have to your local, state/provincial, or national police authorities at once.
Thank you.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You totally misread me.
My argument is that if a guy goes to a place that has 80% cops looking for kids, and that's what he's looking for, anyone charging him with attempted child molestation or other kid-sex crimes has a heavy burden of proof that he was, in fact, looking to prey on kids and not have sex games with cops pretending to be kids.
On the other hand, if the same guy goes into a chat room with 80% kids or even 40% kids the burden of proof is on him that he was, in fact, looking for cops not kids. Unfortunately for him nobody will believe him when he makes such a claim under such circumstances. Besides, even if the prosecutor, grand jury, or jury does believe his story he'll still be guilty of reckless endangerment if he knew or should have known that many kids were around.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I really really hope you are a blowhard making all of this up.
If you aren't that I really hope you are a cop pretending to be a blowhard.
If you are who you say you are I hope you get caught.
I’m a retired Texas lawyer. I have won a 5:7 jury deadlock in the first of 87 dope delivery cases to go to trial using an entrapment defense, resulting in all the offers including the one to my first offender, avidly recruited over time with a series of parties featuring steaks and beer, etc., coming down from 40-60 years to probation. Of course, the risky thing about an entrapment defense is that your client has to tell the jury “I did it” right up front but then demonstrate that he would not have engaged in the conduct but for the officials’ persuasive misconduct. Merely offering someone the opportunity to violate the law if he is so inclined is not entrapment, but there is one U. S. Supreme Court case in which the majority of Justices found and held that the government had been so persistent and persuasive in finally getting someone with no known history of interest or viewing to order child porn, by mail, that it crossed the line and created the crime. I, and some other lawyers in the same building, received one similar mailing, which may have been from the same government operation, years ago, but I sent it to the Postal Inspectors, and never received any more, nor did I hear any more about this until I read the Supreme Court opinion later. I have represented a few child molesters, after and as a direct result of having, very unexpectedly, found myself representing and in other privileged and confidential relationships with an awful lot of survivors of childhood sexual abuse, most of which is incest. Some of the abusers, unlike this defendant who looks like Central Casting’s or the average person’s picture of a perp, were socially, economically, and politically prominent and powerful (palmed off on us by both parties) so didn’t get busted. It is entirely legal and proper for the authorities to offer willing would-be criminals the opportunity to commit crimes and then catch and bust them, as long as the government and its agents do not affirmatively persuade them to commit or attempt to commit the crime. If you don’t see a cop so you speed, and get caught by a cop behind a billboard, that’s your problem because you should not have been speeding. If you try to buy child porn, which can’t be made without abusing a child, or to buy or otherwise solicit sex from someone you believe to be a child too young to consent, dope, an illegal firearm or one you are legally ineligible to possess, or hire a hit-man to kill someone, and get caught because you were really dealing with a cop, you are morally and legally guilty. Assuming that it would be reasonably foreseeable that anyone would be persuaded by “animated emoticons” to try to get something he didn’t want and intend to buy anyway, much less sex with a child which anyone knows is illegal, the short answer to this rather ludicrously desperate argument is that the defendant went looking for sex with a child on line, but for which search, and opening the link, he would never have come to the pitch much less these “animated emoticons.” Trying to have sex with an underage girl is crime one element of which, that the government must prove beyond reasonable doubt, is specific intent.