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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."
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?
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
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"!
You've already made an error in assuming they would "figure it out" to begin with. Most of them are mentally ill, are essentially incapable of "figuring that out", or are unable to recognize they are even harming someone. Harsher prison sentences or abuse from other inmates will never solve the problem.
What they need is treatment, and the security to be able to get treatment without fear of reprisal from other people so they can work on their problems before they hurt someone. Ignorance and failure to accept that simple fact and calls for harsher penalties from the "tough on crime" crowd will never solve the issue, but it will simply make pedophiles keep their mouths shut, avoid treatment, and ultimately hurt someone, further destroying their life and causing abuse for their victim.
...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
I never got how this was supposed to work. It's held against you if you lie to a cop, but they can lie to you with impunity. It seems like a recipe for abuse. The cops are free to trick people into making self-incriminating remarks, even though people supposedly have the right not to self-incriminate. There's really no difference between being manipulated into making a confession (they tricked you), and being cohered into it (they threatened you). This is a loophole in the 5th amendment that has essentially rendered it ineffective.
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.
Is it illegal to be a kid and pretend to be an adult and invite a '13 year old cop' to have sex with you? Because that could be a form of civil disobedience or police denial of service (PDOS?) as well.
ERROR: SIG NOT FOUND (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?:
IANAL but IMO you are allowed to lie.
Actually, IANAL either, BUT I do know this much - if you give a false statement to the cops (whether a witness report, police report, or otherwise) you could be charged with:
- Giving a false statement to police.
- Filing a false police report.
- Impeding an official investigation.
Of course, if the cops lie about you or lie about what they saw or heard, good luck getting it overturned unless there's video evidence.
Riiiight, just love the script kiddie "it didn't happen to me so I don't believe it" horsehit. First of all who the hell cares what your warez pushing botnet herding script kiddie ass thinks? Did anyone ask your opinion? Frankly it was scum like you that ruined the nice free net we had going so STFU.
Second of all the whole fucking point of the channel was to be for noobs and average Joes who were needing help with computer problems and could get that help without being charged per minute or dealing with 50 tons of spyware and drivebys like what we were dealing with during IE on Win9x being the top combo.
So we weren't herding botnets, spreading warez, playing BOFH and finding new ways to ban people or other dickish douchebag behavior like you yourself are bragging about. because we were dealing with noobs we had to deal with a lot of clueless who didn't read the fucking rules and didn't know shit, that was the whole point of the channel so why would I go though all that horseshit to cook up banlists? Before the douchebags and spammers like yourself spread like the damned clap circa 2000 we frankly didn't really have that kind of trouble so we didn't bother.
So you don't believe? Fine don't really care what a warez pusher thinks, especially one that brags about infecting the people I was trying to help and running botnets. For the rest of /. that is the way it went down, and later I found out that nearly every site connected to that IRC node ended up having a little visit from the "AZ Lolita" as we called her and those that took the bait did get popped less than a year later under a dragnet run by.....drumroll...the Scotsdale AZ PD!
So if you want to believe the cops are really nice guys that never entrap to score a quota or impress a DA? That is your business. As someone who has traveled most of the USA and had my head cracked more than once for being "A god damned hippie driving with a nigger" I know better.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.