Glenn will once again find a way to call me stupid/ignorant/dangerous because I am conservative and think that this guy should go to jail.
Glenn will once again find a way to call me stupid/ignorant/dangerous because I am conservative and think that this guy should go to jail.
invincible - "Opinions are like arseholes, everyone has one and everyone thinks that theirs is the only one that doesn't stink."
Elihu Burritt - "Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril and responsibility of our existence."
2008 Record (final): 84-78: NL West Champs
Hey remember when I said something about entrapment and how it's illegal? Your hypothetical situation is not analogous to sting operations because when your friend seeks you out and offers you steak you are under temptation and pressure to respond.Originally Posted by Jennifer
Here is the true analogous situation:
A recent argument with a friend has left you in a tight spot. You make a bet with your bird-nest-eating tree-hugging hippy of a friend that if you can go a week without eating meat he will have to take a bath. If you lose, you have to let him put your hair in dreadlocks. (ANALOGY: there are compelling reasons to avoid meat, and consequences for partaking of it)
Now, the grocery store is right down the street and you know it has plenty of meat. However, being a person in a hypothetical situation, you ignore the grocery store. (ANALOGY: Seriously there are no supermarkets for drugs or children it shouldn't have been part of the situation.)
Your friend shows up at your house and offers to take you to a free steak dinner. You explain the details of your bet to him and he agrees that it'd be worth it to see if the hippy melts when the soap hits his body. He apologizes and reveals the hippy gave him 5 bucks to offer you the steak and you introduce him face-first to the curb for attempting to entrap you. (ANALOGY: When police pull entrapment they end up embarrassed as a criminal gets his charges dismissed.)
Later in the week, you are tired of not eating meat. You call a third friend and, after some casual conversation, you start to carefully ask if he has any meat. It turns out he has a fresh salami that is uncut, and you begin to yearn for the long sausage. You tell him you'll be right over. Soon, you have your lips wrapped around the warm salami when out of nowhere the hippy appears and goes "AHA! I CAUGHT YOU!". He puts your hair in dreadlocks and everyone loses their respect for you; 10 years later you are a hippy and homeless.
Whose fault was it that you ate the meat? You initiated the call with the intent to arrange an appointment to chew on salami. You motivated yourself to travel to your friend's house. You made the move that caused the situation to happen.
In the first (entrapment) case, someone else forced the meat upon you. A bet is a poor analogy to the law in this case but had this been a police officer attempting to sell you drugs you could smoke your weed in peace since your charges would be dropped for entrapment.
I think that the undercover cop tries their best to get them into doing it.
What i'm trying to say is, if the guy buying the children had a REAL person selling children instead of the undercover cop, he may not have done it. Why? Because the REAL person that was selling children probably would not have cared as much to make a sale as the undercover cop. Some might debate that. But I see it as, there's more people that would illegally buy a child than there are undercover cops that spend time trying to bust people with sting operations.
And of course, it is good the cop would try more to make a sale. They're trying to rid the country of those horrible people. And that's good. But you know what? Sometimes it can encourage it, and get people into doing it. The cops have more reason to do the sale so they'd try harder. And, this may be the breaking point for somebody to change their THOUGHT into a real CRIME. Simple as that in my eyes.
Otherwise I pretty much agree with what everybody else said. EXCEPT what I said above.
I follow a lot of what Zelda Warrior says here.
I did research on entrapment earlier today, and I am relieved that provisions exist for pleading entrapment.
However what I also did read, is that current anti-entrapment measures are not good enough.
When a defendant wishes to plead innocent by reason of entrapment, the burden of proof is on him to show that the undercover officer was trying to push the crime.
Unfortunately, the undercover officers are highly knowledgeable on the ways people defend against entrapment, and they have learned how to manage and manipulate their stings in a way that both maximizes the chance that the target will fall into the trap, and at the same time, be unable to get out of the trap by being unable to sufficiently prove it.
When it comes down to it, it is usually the officer's say against the defendant's say.
I'd be interested to know how exactly this sting went down. Like, who said what first. I'd like to know the exact dialogue between the two. If you notice from reading the article, the information is taken from police reports. The news article is inherently biased to begin with.
There is a definite possibility that this man should be able to get free of this situation by pleading entrapment. However, judging by the average populace's hastiness to "fry" and "shoot" the defendant, without even a trial..... I don't think he has such high hopes for the defense to succeed.
Jenny made a great point in that the sensationalism of the accusation is generating emotional bias. The last thing I'd want is for a precedent to be set based on such a bias.
I'd be happy to go into my thoughts on the issue of free will, and may do so elsewhere in a while, so that this particular thread doesn't get derailed.
It doesn't matter that there was an undercover cop responding to this guy's desire. SO what! He shouldn't have responded to the offer nor should he have traveled ALL the way to (Florida I think it was) to fulfill his fantasy.
Just because someone offered him the chance to fulfill his fantasy... he should have RAN in the other direction AWAY from the offer as fast as his legs would have carried him. Instead... he went TOWARD the offer and was willing to make the payment for the opportunity to satisfy his fantasy.
He had free will to *NOT* go... but he did anyway. It's not entrapment. He could have just stayed home but he didn't.
If you love... love without reservation. If you fight... fight without fear.
ST: If you're going to go the way of the ostrich and stick your head into the sand or up your butt and expect everything to go the way you had imagined it, you deserve your fate.
A guy goes into a bar and sits to have a drink. He's had a rough day, some shit went down at home and I think he lost his job. An undercover cop comes and solicits him to pay her for sex. He declines. She leaves, and returns a while later. She repeats her offer, he declines again. She leaves again and returns a final time, continuing to hound him. Just to get her to shut up, he asks "how much?" The cops come him and cuff him and the man is placed under arrest for attempting to pay someone for sex.
That came from a news article a teacher from high school showed me. That is entrapment. That is also nothing like the situation discussed above.
I worked at 7-11 this summer. I was shopped once. This includes a minor coming in and attempting to purchase alcohol or tobacco. If I fail to ask for identification, or receive it and sell anyway, the sheriff comes in and arrests me. This situation would not be unfair, because I know that I am not supposed to sell to minors, regardless of whether this person actually wanted what they were buying.
By the way, I passed.
Yes, that'd be a good idea...
What I posted dosen't apply to here. Sure,the guy may have done it, he may have not. Who knows? That article leaves out a lot of detail thats crucial to figuring out the whole story.
But theres other sting operations set up that don't get told anywhere but locally. Kinds that nobody really knows about... I am not saying that the cops are corrupt thoigh. (well, im sure some are but thats another story
Anyways, you don't know exactly what they said. Yeah, that guy's messed up in the head, but nobody other than the cop will really know what they did. (I'm pretty sure even the guy trying to get the children would know, because I'm sure he hasn't tried anything like it before. So, he dosen't know what to look for when finding somebody that is willing to do it, as in whether they are overly passive about it, try to get them into it, etc.)
Guys guys guys
guys
we still seem unclear on a really important point here. A lot of you seem to be following some kind of invisible red herring and acting like this could have happened to anybody.
How many of you would accidentally stumble upon a person willing to rent their children to you? The internet is a nasty place so I'll go ahead and say it's likely if you were in the wrong place you'd bump into such a person. If the man were arrested for a conversation on the internet I would think he was a creepy old man but guilty of nothing punishable by law.
Now, suppose you bumped into this person on the internet. How many of you would write down their address, book a flight, then fly down there just to see if they were serious? I'm talking about taking days off of work and spending a few hundred dollars on plane tickets and hotel rooms to meet a person who, in your only contact, discussed an interest in an illegal transaction should you meet. At this point I believe the guy is a creepy old man who seems determined to actually pay money to half-drown children. Still no criminal act but I believe at this point monitoring is justifiable.
Now, let's say you were accidentally in the wrong place and intercepted this person, then on a lark invested a large amount of time and money into meeting them. When you meet their middleman, you discuss in great detail how you get off to watching children struggle under the water and confirm your intent to go through with this transaction. You produce the cash and before you can yell "SIKE!" you find yourself arrested.
I believe the odds of that many things being a joke are highly suspect.
There's a lot to be said about what you do here. There are dudes on "To Catch a Predator" that I often wonder if they ever get to court, because really the only thing they did was talk dirty then show up. It's creepy but not a crime. Then there's the guys that show up with condoms, lube, and dildos, or the winners that start removing clothing the instant they show up. Would you really question their intent at that point?
There is seriously a point at which I think you have to be willfully ignorant to believe a person had no intent to commit a crime. In the case of petty crime such as traffic violations then yes action is required; owning a sports car is not a reason to get a speeding ticket. However, in the case of crimes that permanently affect the well-being of others I agree with a more proactive than reactive approach to law enforcement.
I continue to stand behind my belief that no innocent man would arrange the the "rent" of a child, travel across several states, then present money.
Then again, what kind of person would do all that just to 'rent' some child? Even if you are messed up in the head, it still seems like a pain.
Well, let me rephrase that. You're saying that once he's there and it's obvious he's making the action, then the cop has a reasonable doubt to arrest them. Ok, fine. But it seems like a long ways to go just to rent a child... Which is agreeing with you on that point.
But what draws the line between what the cop does thats illegal and what isnt?
This is the question that my passion here really boils down to. I could care less about this news story... it is this concept that is so critical, and the news story just invokes the concept.
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