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."

Comments

Re:Right-o, buddy.

[i.r.id10t]

Lets take the kid out of the equation and substitute something else that is often sensationalized - gun buying.

Mayor Bloomberg of NYC hired some folks in Arizona to go to a gunshow and purchase arms from private individuals. Nothing in Arizona law prevents person to person transfers, and Fed law only requires that both parties be residents of the same state and the transaction take place in that state. So legal for a non-Felon Arizona citizen to buy/sell to/from another non-Felon.

But... Bloomberg wants to close that awful "gunshow loophole". So he has the persons he hired lie and ask if there was a background check, "'cause I prolly can't pass it"

End result? No charges filed, no nothing, because the individuals were in fact not prohibited from buying guns. In fact, Bloomberg had to write Arizona a nice fat check over the whole deal.

Re:Yet another "It was entrapment!" defense

[sribe]

Roughly, yes. More specifically, entrapment is something that induces someone to commit a crime that he would not have otherwise. Pretending to be a 13-year old online in order to attract old perverts who are looking for 13-year-olds is not entrapment.

(Important precedent was established in the DeLorean case. DeLorean was told there were investors interested in his troubled car company. As soon as the undercover feds mentioned drugs he started trying to back out. They threatened his family. He dealt. They arrested. He spent a long time and a lot of money at his trial to force them to produce the unedited video of that meeting.)

Someday they will almost all be cops

[davidwr]

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.

Re:Someday they will almost all be cops

[c6gunner]

You raise a good point. A girl traveled almost 1,200 miles to visit me. High five?

Definitely high five. I never had something like that. But about the time I was 17, I went on a road-trip to Florida and met up with a bunch of them along the way :) Apparently the phrase "we may never get this chance again" is a heck of an aphrodisiac. Best trip of my life!

Re:Good

[hairyfeet]

You know, as much as I hate kiddie pervs having to actually deal with the cops when running an IRC chat room during the 90s I can say if my experience is typical (and I have no reason to feel it isn't) then entrapment is SOP among the cops when it comes to this crap. My example:

My boss at the time let me run an IRC chat to keep me from being bored between fixes at the shop so I set up A Windows repair chat which was VERY clearly marked as such, had strict rules on the layout of posts (name of OS, brief description of problem, be ready to follow instructions given, etc) when this poster comes on claiming to be a 15 year old girl comes on and start seriously hitting on everyone there. I tell them I"I don't know where you think you are but this a Windows repair site for people that are having serious computer issues, not a sex site. If you're not having PC problems please find another site."

Well after this the "girl" starts targeting me directly, one filthy suggestion after another, offering to send dirty pics of herself and asking for pics of me, etc. Meanwhile I'm dealing with a 28 year old mother of two that is practically in tears because the used PC she picked up for her family is BSODing about every 4 minutes like clockwork (turned out to be a bad graphics driver install) causing her to lose connection and having to have her son hook her back up so I have NO time for this shit and after being interrupted for the dozenth time by the little slut I just said "Look kid, I frankly don't give a shit WHAT you look like, A I have a nice woman I'm quite happy with, B, I don't date women more than 4 years younger than me, and C This is a fucking repair site not a dating site so get lost already!"

So the screen goes silent and I manage to get the freaked out mom fixed and then up pops for the 15 year old "I'm Sgt Maria whatever of the AZ polic dept. I just wanted to say you are the only one who has failed to take my bait and its nice to know there are still guys out there that aren't pervs". Well then I promptly gave the bitch a dressing down about the constitution and entrapment and banned her IP address as well as posted it to every site I could think up, just daring her ass to say anything about it!

So don't take the cops word on these things, as dealing with them myself I can tell you they'll do everything short of sending underage girls to your home trying to score busts. This one was offering tons of pics of "her" including dildo shots which I have NO DOUBT was CP they busted off someone and was using for their little "sting" as bait. It was the most blatant case of entrapment I'd ever seen, and as I said this was a place where the average post was "Sound failed need help!" or "BSOD every time I launch browser, help please!" so they HAD NO REASON to even be there. It was total bullshit and after dealing with them first hand frankly I wouldn't take a cop's word on one of these things if they said it was raining and I was ass deep in water.

Re:Ah.. no

[hairyfeet]

If you're a cop then you should know how many assholes are cops and thus it shouldn't surprise you. I still have a nice scar down the back of my head for being a "God damned hippie riding with a nigger" so I hope it doesn't offend you when I say if I saw one of your kind bleeding in the street I would calmly walk away.

Frankly you and your fellow cops should be ashamed at the "thin blue line" wall of silence protect the scum cops bullshit. look up "the largest gang in America" to see why so many of us can't stand you. There you will see more than 3 and a half hours of cops breaking bones, tasering, and generally acting like gangbangers with badges. Those of us that have gotten a taste of it would frankly rather deal with the thugs than have ANYTHING to do with you.

I have lived on the wrong side of the tracks more than once, dealt with mob, gangbangers, thugs, and all the other assorted nasties and you know what? They didn't go out of their way to be pricks unlike your fellow blue wearing thugs.

And whether this person was a cop should be pretty obvious since I pointed out many were busted a year later by the Scotsdale AZ PD and whether you call it enticement or not it is STILL bullshit and a mockery of our constitution. When I was a kid there was decent cops, but all took early retirement to get away from the gangbangers. Now in my home town half the cops live like Tony Montana thanks to us being on the meth highway, and I can't even remember the last time a cop spent so much as a minute in jail here, no matter what they do.

Want us to respect you? Then follow the constitution and throw every dirty junkie gangbanger cop in the jail as fast as you can. Otherwise the rest of us will look at you for what you are...the biggest gang in America. And I'd say skirting the law and even breaking it to "make the bust" is SOP now in the USA.