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

Ugh. Mistrial.

[Bogtha]

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.

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.

Just to be clear....

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Just to be clear....

[GooberToo]

The law in many states as it relates to sexual offenses are very, very broken. For example, simply peeing in public, in some states, is enough to have you arrested and classified as a sexual predator.

Basically, many states require checkins and public notification for people moving into your neighborhood because they had to pee. This is a great example of how stupid and seemingly corrupt cops and courts can be.

Re:Just to be clear....

[vertinox]

That seems wrong to me.

Laws of intent seem rather dubious to me simply because one can craft any intention out of anything innocent.

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." -Cardinal Richelieu (disputed tho)

The point of this quote is that authoritarian figures can simply take anything you do or say and make a crime out of it with intent:

You bought a gun. Well, maybe you are planning to kill a politician with it?

You have a chemistry set in your house. Well, maybe you were planning to make drugs with it?

You have encryption on your computer. Well, maybe you were planning on hiding illegal activity?

See where I'm going with this. It is simply your word against theirs. No one can read your mind to see if you are telling the truth, so they are simply accusing you of something that you haven't done but could possibly do. How can you defend against that?

Crimes should be things that actually happened after the fact or in progress. Yes the cops should stop a person who is trying to commit a crime and yes they should prosecute them for the action itself, but if you can convict a person on the intent to commit a crime are basically condemning the good majority of citizens who would never in their life commit such a crime.

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.