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Judge Frees "Cannibal Cop" Who Shared His Fantasies Online
AthanasiusKircher (1333179) writes The story is classic: Boy meets Girl. Boy likes Girl. Boy goes on the internet and writes about his fantasies that involve killing and eating Girl. Boy goes to jail. In this case, the man in question, NYC police officer Gilberto Valle, didn't act on his fantasies — he just shared them in a like-minded internet forum. Yesterday, Valle was released from jail after a judge overturned his conviction on appeal. U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe wrote that Valle was "guilty of nothing more than very unconventional thoughts... We don't put people in jail for their thoughts. We are not the thought police and the court system is not the deputy of the thought police." The judge concluded that there was insufficient evidence, since "this is a conspiracy that existed solely in cyberspace" and "no reasonable juror could have found that Valle actually intended to kidnap a woman... the point of the chats was mutual fantasizing about committing acts of sexual violence on certain women." (A New York magazine article covered the details of the case and the implications of the original conviction earlier this year.)
Actually he _was_ convicted of misusing the DB (max sentence 12 months). He's been in jail for more than 18 months so at this point, he has served more than enough to satisfy the highest possible sentence.
As a side note, the most disturbing part of this case to me, was Valle's illegal use of the DB to find out information about people for purely personal reasons. I'm sort of shocked that such a crime carries a max 12 month sentence. What that says to me is that law enforcement agencies and the governments that set them up, don't really care how their own misuse government power. Nor does the media for the most part as demonstrated by the thousands of words spent on the prurient charms of this case, but in any article, there is at most a single sentence about the DB issue.
Here's an example:
Tabloid same as NY Times, you'll have to search the page for "database" to find that single sentence.:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07...
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I would think the fantasizing, "I am going to have to use the database to find someone who fits these parameters" would be the fantasy, and actually using the database to find someone who meets the target requirements would be the overt act.
Except that's not what happened, at least according to what I've read. He used the database not to FIND victims, but to look up personal information about women he already knew. It's still abuse of police power, and he should be punished for that (and was).
The question is whether he ever appeared to use that information in any way that would further his supposed "conspiracy." And the actual evidence says that not only did he NOT use that information to plan attacks, but he deliberately kept that information to himself. He never shared any information from the databases with his supposed "co-conspirators," and in fact deliberately changed up personal details of the supposed "victims" (including mixing in false things with true) when he posted about his fantasies.
If he were actually trying to use this information to plan an elaborate plot to kill people, why would he intentionally avoid sharing this (illegally-obtained) information with his "conspirators" and why would he feed them false information? On the other hand, if he was a generally law-abiding cop who felt guilty about his inappropriate access to personal data and actually wanted to be sure his "conspirators" never went too far, his behavior makes perfect sense.
Furthermore, in terms of "overt acts," one needs to consider the history of all of these "plots." There were many, many "plots" hatched, dates mentioned, all sorts of details given, but there's no evidence that any of these actors in the "conspiracy" ever actually took actions in the real world to make any of these detailed plots possible. This would suggest that there was no intention to actually carry out most of these "plots," and the burden of proof is on the prosecutor to prove that some particular plot was ever actually serious and set in motion... since in context, it's clear the default was that the plots were fantasy.