Slashdot Mirror
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.)
That's fairly surprising, and really quite reasonable.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Didn't he use a police database to look for women? Didn't he browse the web looking for ways to cook human flesh?
Fuck this guy.
What ever floats your boat, dude.
Seriously, Timothy - just why is this on Slashdot? Are you channeling something? Is this a hint? Are we trying to compete with the New York Daily News?
Does this actually matter?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
... a novelist or script writer or something. Imagine Hitchcock or Stephen King before they made it big. They must have such dark thoughts, some of them committed to paper. Easy to imagine the "script" as a thinly veiled attempt by a depraved individual to distance himself from his perverted fantasies. Well, they did not have internet then, and they had the sensibility to pitch it as novel or script.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Well, he used a computer at some point so it's Slashdot material :)
I take it he just didn't post "I'd love to eat her out" then. Seriously though it's getting rather dangerous when people are being jailed for thinking something bad, who here at one time or another hasn't had "evil" thoughts at one time or another?
http://chimpbox.us
I bet you if he wrote about child pornography or terrorism it would be a different story.
However, I agree with the judgement. It's a very slippery slop once that line is crossed and you have to take the good with the bad when you want ANY freedom.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Include:
-Working hard
-Buying things
-Having a family
All other fantasies will be regarded as anti-social
From TFA: "Gilberto Valle was 25 years old and still living with his father in Queens when, in 2009, he met Kathleen Mangan on OKCupid."
OKC strikes again! Someone met a creeper on OKC who still lived with their parents? Imagine that....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
We don't put people in jail for their thoughts.
I'm not convinced this is true.
Neither was the judge, I take it. I believe that was a statement to remind us how we intend to live not how we do live.
What's wrong with that? Lots of amusing things come up when you Google that. Hell, Google auto completed the search for me, suggesting "recipes" after I had typed in "human meat".
Incidentally, I'm not much of a whiz in the kitchen, but I suspect human flesh would work pretty well in a red sauce or curry. The bigger problem of course would be the cost of obtaining it, followed by the difficulty of obtaining lean cuts, particularly if you reside in the first world....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Because a lot of us are freedom nerds, and this ruling is interesting in that it was allowed to go to trial, but the judge issued a judgment notwithstanding the verdict that preserves free thought.
As to GP post, yes, they should have tried him for any crimes he committed using the police database, and I obviously assume he's no longer Popo, but this was not an actual conspiracy to commit a crime, locking people up because they are gross under the guise of conspiracy is not the solution to anything.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
>mutual fantasizing about committing acts of sexual violence
Umm, it sounded like acts of culinary violence to me.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
A western liver of a commited cereal eater should be like a good fois gras.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Incidentally, I'm not much of a whiz in the kitchen, but I suspect human flesh would work pretty well in a red sauce or curry.
... with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.
What is the difference between "talking about murder fantasies" and "conspiracy to commit murder"?
"Honestly, I wasn't trying to get my wife killed, I was just really upset and venting steam, it's not my fault a professional hit-man decided to help me out"
I don't even know how they could arrest the guy. He had done nothing at that point, he had made no plans to do anything, no tools, according to his ex who installed spyware on his computer, he was supposedly writing on anonymous fetish sites.
I presume you're basing this assumption on the contents of TFS.
I read some other articles about this case yesterday - he bought the tools, and used a classified police database to shop for victims. To me, that's a bit past "fantasy" and more into "planning to do this shit."
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
He had done nothing at that point, he had made no plans to do anything[...]
It might not be in the particular article linked above, but this guy was using police databases to research a bunch of women. I'm certainly not happy leaving people like that to their own devices.
The difference is that in a conspiracy someone plans to DO something unlawful, or cause someone else to do it... and not just talk about it. A "conspiracy" is "a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful". A fantasy is just the "activity of imagining things".
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
The problem is using a forum.
Steven King got rich writing stuff like this, but he did it as an "author".
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If this was just a guy posting trash on Facebook I'd probably side with you. If you read the details of the case, you will find that this is not just someone ranting. This appears to be someone conspiring to commit rape, murder, and kidnapping.
Whether the primary web site has a disclaimer or not, does not change the fact that this goes beyond the simple act of writing about a sick fantasy. He offered to kidnap someone for 5,000.00. He went and found a recipe for chloroform, then built a pulley system to string up one of the people he was talking about kidnapping and murdering. He used a Police database illegally for the purpose of gathering personal information about the people he appeared to be conspiring against (it was more than 1). This goes well beyond simply discussing "unconventional thoughts".
Lets change the scenario a bit. If I was to claim I want to kill someone on Facebook, I'd be a person of interest but not doing anything illegal. When I go out and search for recipes for poisons, I'm still not illegal but I should be under watch, especially if the poison is generic household items which I may have on hand. Once I start illegally gathering personal information about the targets I claimed I want to kill, would I not be conspiring to commit murder? What if I owned a gun, would that be enough? (Remember that this person was a Cop and had a Gun, as well as a position of authority to abuse, and could have been legally stalking victims without anyone's knowledge on "patrols")
If you believe it's reasonable, would you want the guy as a neighbor? Invite them over over for dinner? If so, good for you. I'd prefer to see a person like this under watch and psychological monitoring at a minimum.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
It's hard to find deer meat at the local grocery store, but yet all my friends have tons deer sausage overflowing out of their freezer. The key is to simply change your mindset and harvest the "wildlife" you see coming out of a vegan restaurant. Myself, I like corn-feed meat, so I would probably set up my hunting blind in a Golden Corral parking lot. I've been told it tastes like veal.
If we were to lock him up for ideas that if acted upon would be dangerous, the moderate left, center and right would be justified in openly exterminating the entire registered member list of every Socialist, Fascist and Communist movement in the US. Ideas do have consequences, one of which is that if you are going to declare that a hypothetical cannibal is a threat to his neighbors because he might snap and eat them (despite showing no signs of willingness to act on his depravity), then society would be justified in wiping out those political movements known to have a historic predisposition to slaughter their opponents.
It matters quite a bit. While this is an extreme case, it is closely related to the debate (and arrests) involving things like trash talking in video games or, well, the core player base of EvE Online.
so I would probably set up my hunting blind in a Golden Corral parking lot
Hunting blind? Why would you need one of those? Your prey is too busy looking at its cell phone to notice you sneaking up on it.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Unless you can prove he actually was planning to do so, it doesn't matter. He could've been looking for people to fantasize about, rather than planning on actually doing it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
If the story is truly a classic, where's the silvery moon which then explodes for no adequately explored reason!?
Ezekiel 23:20
He was definatley working himself up to live his fantasies and he definately should have been convicted for misuse of the law enforcement database and anything else that could have stuck. Conspiracy to kidnap and murder.. they almost had enough for that but even given that he talked about his intent and purchased implements for a kill that probably shouldn't be enough to convict. Misleading slashdot headline though. This guy was almost certainly preparing for a kill and actively hunting he just hadn't settled on a target yet.
Assault someone with a bat and go to jail for 5 years. Say, "I hate black people!" while doing it and go to jail for 15 years.
So yeah, we DO put people in jail for thoughts.
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Hate crime legislation DOES punish thoughts: we've decided that what you were thinking at the time of a crime somehow makes your crime worse than that of someone who wasn't thinking "hateful thoughts". If we hold to the principle that "the punishment must fit the crime," then hate crime laws seem to directly criminalize certain thoughts, which in the USA seems to come dangerously close to treading on the freedom of thought and expression protected by the first amendment, if not stomping all over it.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
Stuff that's delicious.
We don't put people in jail for their thoughts.
I'm not convinced this is true.
You should have said "I don't think this is true." And then immediately been incarcerated.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
The line between detailed fantasies and "planning murder" is still fuzzy. I've had detailed visions involving paper clips, rubber-bands, and staplers of things I wanted to do to torture egotistical conniving moronic co-workers. (It was just torture, not death.) It's a great catharsis, therapeutic even.
Oh oh, I hear footsteps... [NO CARRIER]
Table-ized A.I.
Except that the crime is assault. I think it shouldn't be a charge of its own, but I see no problem with a zeroth degree murder charge or assault with a racist insult.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
"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."
Clearly, he doesn't understand the intent of modern American government.
-Styopa
Trying to paint this as against free thought is patently ridiculous given that he not only thought something, sharing it with other freaks and then taking logical, detailed steps in order to make what he was thinking reality. This is someone that should be locked up, preferably in a psychiatric institution. Other people have rightfully been locked up for good for less!
no one should ever get punished in any form for his/her thoughts nor writings nor drawings, under no circumstances. Thought is the very last freedom bastion and should be held highest among everything...
And the dude that bragged to his friends how he'll break into some rich family's home, torture, rape and kill everyone there? When he buys a gun and starts googling for good targets he should be locked up!
And yet we have people in prison for viewing anime because the line drawings bring to mind children in American minds but not in the Japanese artists who draw these cartoons. Talk about thought police and people being put in prison for no reason at all!
Only if you can prove he really was about to do something.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Only if you can prove he really was about to do something.
Let's be realistic here - if he wasn't a government agent, he'd already be in jail.
Like these people.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I don't think he actually bought the tools. He was googling around for some of them, and for a recipe for chloroform, but I just read the New Yorker article and it didn't say he bought any of the tools. He talked about having an oven he could fit a woman in, but didn't actually own such an oven. He also talked about having a cabin in the woods they could take a victim, but he didn't own such a cabin.
If he had bought the tools, yeah I'd say a conspiracy to commit murder charge might be appropriate, but he didn't. So it was still in the realm of fantasy.
As for using the police database for this, yeah, that's illegal, and that's what he correctly served his time for.
Regardless, the whole thing is creepy as fuck. Ordinarily, I wouldn't give a crap what somebody's fantasy or fetish is. Their business. Even this guy's. But once he started naming names and making plans, that pushes it over the edge. That is a hard, hard thing to say "live and let live" about.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
We've always had different standards of punishments for different thoughts. State of mind is the difference between manslaughter, murder in the 2nd degree and murder in the 1st degree.
Hate crime consideration in sentencing is appropriate, because of the intent to terrorize a population in addition to the act committed.
If your neighbor is murdered by a business partner to collect insurance money, that's murder in the first degree. Terrible thing. Premeditated. You might be creeped out for awhile, but you feel no threat against you because the murderer had a specific target, for a specific reason, which has nothing to do with you.
Now let's say you're a black guy, and your neighbor's a black guy, and a bunch of dudes in white sheets string up your neighbor and light a lower-case letter t on fire in his lawn. That's murder in the first degree. Premeditated. However, in this case, in addition to killing that one black guy, the klansmen are clearly intending to intimidate and threaten the victim's neighbors and community. That additional damage done to a community, beyond the one act of murder, should be punished more harshly, as the perpetrators did more harm.
It's basically an added charge for "terrorism."
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
... to eat people on line.
That said, maybe this guy shouldn't be a cop.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I don't think he actually bought the tools. He was googling around for some of them, and for a recipe for chloroform, but I just read the New Yorker article and it didn't say he bought any of the tools. He talked about having an oven he could fit a woman in, but didn't actually own such an oven. He also talked about having a cabin in the woods they could take a victim, but he didn't own such a cabin.
If he had bought the tools, yeah I'd say a conspiracy to commit murder charge might be appropriate, but he didn't. So it was still in the realm of fantasy.
What, you mean a mainstream media outlet gave me bad info? Inconceivable!
Regardless, the whole thing is creepy as fuck. Ordinarily, I wouldn't give a crap what somebody's fantasy or fetish is. Their business. Even this guy's. But once he started naming names and making plans, that pushes it over the edge. That is a hard, hard thing to say "live and let live" about.
Agreed; add in the fact that non-government-agent types who have done pretty much the same thing were not let off so lightly.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Most loony bins were closed, all those people are on the streets terrorizing the general population into demanding that the government be given more money and power
I could swear a few stories up is this:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/07/03/1846215/nsa-considers-linux-journal-readers-tor-and-linux-users-extremists
we don't put people in jail for unconventional thoughts eh?
Oh wait, only if they are STEM graduates.
If you've bothered to notice, sentences depend on a lot of things, including the intention of the criminal. There are things that are crimes depending on the person's thoughts: many laws have words like "knowingly" in them.
As far as I've found in the US, "hate crime" isn't a concerned unless there's a crime already involved. It only comes into play in determining the sentence.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
This guy was clearly doing bad, and for his abuse of authority (use of police DB) should be punished, but was it really a conspiracy? that takes two people planning something, how serious was the guy he was fantasizing with? The judge said there was no evidence of intent, I haven't read all the transcripts, so I don't want to say definitively where it fell.
This is a person that needs help, and to not have the authoratiy of legitimate use of force, but to to be committed seems a little extreme.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
What's eating you?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Wow! You are *multiple* kinds of moron! Very impressive. Please don't breed.
1) You can't prove anybody is "about" to do something of their own volition. By your (idiotic) reasoning, I should be permitted to walk down the street with a loaded pistol in each hand, pointing one at anybody who gets within twenty feet of me or makes eye contact. After all, you can't prove I'm going to shoot anybody who doesn't attack me first!
2) Even if you can establish a reasonable proof that somebody *intended* to do something criminal, that doesn't actually constitute proof E "really was about to do something." For example, suppose my buddy and I have a fantasy about raping a woman, then cutting her up an eating her. He starts dating this lady. I start buying chains and knives and cutting utensils. My buddy and I exchange emails wherein we discuss our plan: he'll bring her over for a barbecue at my place, we'll slip something into her drink, then we'll chain her down and so on. We set a date and get her agreement to come along; I buy the drugs. At the agreed-upon time, he shows up at my place with the discussed victim. Assuming I have ground beef and bus in the fridge, can you *prove* I'm not just going to change my mind and just grill up some really good burgers instead?
3) Establishing proof is the responsibility of the court system. You arrest people on a reasonable suspicion. Now, I'm of the opinion that the justice system needs to compensate those it arrests when they're innocent (in the sense of making sure they get their stuff back and covering the value of anything lose due to the arrest), and that arrests made *without* reasonable suspicion should result in the officer(s) in question being arrested or at least strongly disciplined themselves, but that doesn't seem to be the way the government wants to run things.
4) Even regarding things in the past, there's generally no such thing as proof of who committed a crime. If I watch a guy shoot somebody, make a citizen's arrest until the cops get there, and they take him away... can I truly confirm that the person sitting handcuffed across the courtroom from me two weeks later is the same person I watched kill another person? I mean, he looks about the same as he did at the time, and he may have the same fingerprints as the guy the cops booked back then and as were found on the murder weapon... However, I don't know he doesn't have a twin or other person who just looks very similar, I don't know that the cops actually fingerprinted the right guy, I don't know whether he was using a silicone layer or something to give false fingerprints, even if I could compare the fingerprints myself I don't have the training to tell how much is typical variation between multiple readings of the same person and therefore have to take somebody else's word for it being the same even though I don't know if that person has been bribed or otherwise has an incentive to lie or is even competent to make that call themselves... True proof is impossible. That's why laws have defined terms like "a preponderance of evidence" and "beyond a reasonable doubt" and so on when discussing what it takes to convict people.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Hard work isn't a value in itself.
Of course it is. You just don't have that value.
Family is only valuable if you are going to put in the effort to raise capable children.
Wrong again. Family has value even if you don't do that.
There are plenty of half-assed families out there raising mouth-breathing dullards, which does nothing to improve society.
Maybe (and maybe not) but it's irrelevant to the value of family.
When people refer to "buying things" as a bad thing, they're usually referring to impulse buying. It may enrich advertizes and manufacturers of useless baubles, but it is generally a waste of resources and loaded with opportunity costs.
Everything in the world has, by definition, exactly the value paid for it. It's a circular argument but it goes right to the definition of "value".
We don't put people in jail for their thoughts.
This statement alone should disqualify this judge from service. The US imprisons people for their thoughts all the time. People say stuff publicly, most of the time these are just pissed off folks shooting their mouth off, they have no intention of actually doing anything. But modern times are here and the FBI enjoys arresting these people because it is easy, 99.99% of them are harmless.
The problem in this case is it was starting to go outside of the realms of fantasy. This guy was starting to buy torture devices off the internet, building restraining devices, using police databases in order to track the movements of his intended victims, and even hired himself out as a hit man to a third party. This guy is clearly getting off simply because he is a police officer. If I was under suspicion with the same evidence, I would probably be looking at ten years minimum.
Wow! You are *multiple* kinds of moron! Very impressive. Please don't breed.
Funny, I think the same about you. Your post doesn't convince me of anything.
1) You can't prove anybody is "about" to do something of their own volition. By your (idiotic) reasoning, I should be permitted to walk down the street with a loaded pistol in each hand, pointing one at anybody who gets within twenty feet of me or makes eye contact. After all, you can't prove I'm going to shoot anybody who doesn't attack me first!
No, by my logic, there's no proof or reason to think that it was anything beyond fantasy. I know you hate it, but you have to prove things beyond a shadow of a doubt in order to convict someone. I do not think that happened here, and neither does this judge, apparently.
But you seem more focused on arguing semantics than you do about the issue at hand. Begone, insect.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Then it would probably a good idea to make sure *no one* goes to jail for such things.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I don't think so. Again, prove he was about to take action and you're good. I don't care if you think something is unlikely.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
can you *prove* I'm not just going to change my mind and just grill up some really good burgers instead?
I suppose not. You're off the hook, hopefully.
4) Even regarding things in the past, there's generally no such thing as proof of who committed a crime. If I watch a guy shoot somebody, make a citizen's arrest until the cops get there, and they take him away... can I truly confirm that the person sitting handcuffed across the courtroom from me two weeks later is the same person I watched kill another person?
It always baffles me when I use a word like "proof" and people like you feel the need to be 'smart' and go off ranting about how you can't truly prove much of anything, as if I'm not already aware of that. Substitute the lone word "proof" for "beyond a reasonable doubt" or something. Was that so hard?
True proof is impossible.
While we're fucking around, can you prove that?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Can't disagree. I care more about equal treatment under law than I do for punishing some pervert for having a sick fantasy (that they never actually act on).
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese