STINGS ARE ENTRAPMENT

the CNN report is clearly poorly done.

Not a surprise from them. Race to press with the headline and bother with the facts later.

http://www.slate.com/id/2275735/pagenum/2

there is no doubt in my mind but that the criminal justice system is broken, and that the government has taken up with abusing the citizenry.

What about meeting for non-sexual purposes ?

Internet stings are entrapment when conducted in adult environments and undercover officers are portraying themselves as willing participants in sexual communications, and yes, even sexual acts. The United States Supreme Court has already stated in numerous cases that this kind of activity is entrapment. However, since people seem to have a hard time coming to terms with the thought of men showing up to have consensual sex with a teenager, the government is able to get away with it. Stop with the nonsense saying that these men arrested are a danger to society and leave emotions out of the picture. Visit the blogs at Edit [Moderator]: Link removed to learn the truth about internet stings and how they are illegal.

I suppose you can cite such US Supreme Court rulings. Dot gov websites, not you own blog.

I started the thread and yes, I have a big time problem with men having "consensual sex" with teenagers . Its a felony called statutory rape. Please dont tell me youre a member of NAMBLA (And I dont mean The NAtional Association of MArlon Brando Look-Alikes)

I hope that this post does not go unnoticed since the discussion is so old but what I have to write needs to be written.

The most glaringly obvious fact being ignored that constitutes internet stings being a method of entrapment is the fact that the stings are conducted on websites or in chat rooms that have adult content where minors are prohibited. If someone is searching for pornography or having adult conversations in an adult environment then they are obviously not trolling the internet looking for a minor to victimize. This fact alone establishes lack of mens rea (criminal intent) PRIOR to police involvement. That is the biggest piece of the entrapment defense that is being ignored merely because of the end result that was the ultimate goal of the undercover officer and not the men being arrested. Having said that, the criminal intent obviously lies with the undercover officer because they are the ones going to adult websites waiting for men to stumble into the trap. Furthermore, the idea to have sexual communications with a minor is planted in the suspects mind by the mere presence of a “minor” in an adult environment.

Secondly, police officers are not conducting any kind of investigation before doing an internet sting to see if there is any criminal activity going on giving them probable cause to do the sting. These stings are just being randomly conducted and are not targeting people that are already engaged in criminal activity. Thus, an internet sting is doing nothing more than creating crime that does not exist. Even if a minor were to actually be in an adult environment where they know they are not suppose to be, then the criminal intent would exist with the minor and not the adult that the minor is persuading into coming over to their house to engage in illegal activity. I find this scenario to be a rarity, if it is even possible at all, because teenagers are typically not interested in adult males and are kicked out of adult environments if their “true identity” is discovered. Having said this, it would make more sense that if a minor really was in an adult environment then they certainly would not reveal themselves as being an actual minor.

In closing, I am going to say things very controversial in nature but fortunately this is not a crime and the law is used to justify my reasoning. So what if these men showed up to have sex with what someone else said was a minor. There is no way to know if they actually believed it, if they were actually going to have sex even if they do have condoms, or if they were just merely acting out of curiosity which resulted from the persuasion. So what if these men were thinking about having sex with a minor because that thought was placed in their minds by the scenario that the police officers created, carried out, and induced. Thinking about doing something is not a crime and these men did not think about having sex with a minor before stumbling into an undercover officer that has the criminal intent to ruin someone’s life. Visit the blogs at Edit [Moderator]: Link removed for supporting case law and statements and help put a stop to the massacre.

In sex law America is moving towards demanding due diligence in making sure that the sex is legal, because this is the direction that the feminists want to go. No longer is intent to commit an illegal act required, only that the protocol prescribed by the state for making sure that the sex is legal is not followed, even if the sex never took place. It is the same as making it a crime to not take a contract to a lawyer for review even when the contract was never signed...Nutty an abusive towards the citizen as hell, but this is where we are. Make no mistake, sex law does not conform to the standards of the rest of law, and I have long argued that it does not conform to the Constitution either.


The American Puritans who drive this abuse will always be with us, but they dont always have the upper hand, they have been put down before and we can do it again. It would be helpful if we would put in place a Supreme Court which demanded that the Constitution be followed, if the members would but fidelity to the Constitution above personal ideology, but such quality individuals might be a long time coming....our broken political system is not up to the task of creating a quality court.

It is bad enough that the Constitution is being ignored when police conduct internet stings and it is even worse because the laws are distorted to achieve that end. What bothers me the most is that legal precedence that is supposed to be followed is not just because of the controversial nature of the subject. Legal precedence not only interprets the law but also interprets it in such a way that conforms to the Constitution (at least it does most of the time) and sets appropriate guidelines for law enforcement officials TO FOLLOW.

What the citizens of this country need to understand about the Constitution is not only that it gives us rights and freedoms no other nation has but also establishes the fact that THE NATION IS THE PEOPLE AND NOT THE GOVERNMENT. We need to realize that the Constitution being shredded right in front of our face is OUR FAULT especially when all we do is sit here and discuss it. This may be a Republic but we have just as much power as the Government especially when that Government has abused their authority by interpreting the Constitution the way they want to and “enforce laws” in such a way that actually create the crime. With this in mind, ANY STING whether on the internet or not is a violation of the Law and the Constitution. However, since the media has switched their role from “keeping an eye” on the Government to helping it spread the injustice and prejudice that it operates under, the nation itself gets corrupted because the people are gullible and believe everything they read.

The idea for a “sting” was probably thought of by a police officer sitting in a donut shop with nothing to do and on the brink of losing their job because there were no criminals to catch or he/she was just not smart enough to find the criminals. “Hey boss, look who I caught doing what they were not suppose to be doing because I supplied them with the drugs, the prostitute, the imaginary minor, the illegal child pornography, etc. We are going to charge them with breaking the law even though I broke the law to do it and we are going to use everything they say against them even though I am the one that put the thought in their head and supplied them with what they needed. We don’t just enforce the law, we are the law.”

The first step to reducing crime is by not letting law enforcement get away with this mentality and start laying off officers when there is nothing to do just like any other organization would do when productivity is low. When a McDonalds is having an “off month” and they did not sell enough Big Macs, the business does not force their employees to start spending more of their money to compensate for lost sales. The employees have their wages cut because customers can not be created out of thin air. Police officers are not allowed to break the law and become criminals themselves just to keep their job and “create customers”.

Florida Governor Rick Scott probably already has a good idea about why police officers conduct stings which is why he cut the federal budget to all the “law enforcement” organizations asking for more money just to do them. He believes that the problem with the government is that there is too much of it and the people are losing control and being oppressed. I know that he is right and as a member of this Democratic Republic I am going to do everything that I can to put a stop to it. The internet sting is the first place I decided to start because it is so blatantly obvious that everyday citizens are being “murdered” over a publicity stunt. I challenge everyone to find just one of these people arrested in an internet sting, especially if arrested in Florida since it has been deemed the most corrupt state, and help them get their life back and shut these illegal stings down. The fact is, if we let these things continue to happen we are only hurting ourselves even if we don’t get arrested. The blogs at Edit [Moderator]: Link removed are a good place to start helping these people.

I have long said something like:
when I talk about how the feminists continually need to redefine abuse downwards, redefine rape for instance, so that they will have more victims to save. The Violence Against Women Act is first and foremost a jobs program for the savor community. However, I think that the entrapment exercises are more intended to sell what ever scare is being pushed at the moment, sometimes it is child predators and sometimes it is islamic radicals, keeping employed is part of the goal, but the man goal is to keep us scared so that we will not object to being abused by the state (government).

I don’t know why the link to my blog was deleted because of the importance of the issue. However, if you chose to educate yourself on internet sting entrapment do a Google search with the title of my blog “Florida Scandal: The truth about internet sting entrapment”.

There are volunteer positions available with “Perversion of Justice” including but not limited to web designers, investigators, and reporters. Reporters are in charge of monitoring adult web sites looking for any suspicious profiles and kicking them out reporting on the activity that they encountered to post to the web. Investigators are in charge of investigating internet stings and finding evidence of entrapment from past arrests. Web developers will of course be in charge of posting content and the evidence that is found. Also, I am not a web developer so I am having trouble designing the web page myself. All serious inquiries should go to [email protected].

Finally, since people seem to be ignoring the blogs in the side bar with the supporting case law that proves entrapment here are the cases along with the Florida Statute on entrapment:

Fla. Stat. ch. 777.201

Entrapment—

(1) A law enforcement officer, a person engaged in cooperation with a law enforcement officer, or a person acting as an agent of a law enforcement officer perpetrates an entrapment if, for the purpose of obtaining evidence of the commission of a crime, he or she induces or encourages and, as a direct result, causes another person to engage in conduct constituting such crime by employing methods of persuasion or inducement which create a substantial risk that such crime will be committed by a person other than one who is ready to commit it.


Jeffery L. Cashatt v. State of Florida, 873 So. 2d 430 (2004)

…sexually oriented communication on a computer on-line service which is viewed by a child is not a violation of the statute unless the sender of the communication “knowingly” attempts by the communication to seduce the child.


Sherman v. United States, 356 U.S. 369 (1958)

Entrapment occurs only when the criminal conduct was "the product of the creative activity" of law enforcement officials.

In Sorrells v. United States, 287 U. S. 435, this Court firmly recognized the defense of entrapment in the federal courts. The intervening years have in no way detracted from the principles underlying that decision. The function of law enforcement is the prevention of crime and the apprehension of criminals. Manifestly, that function does not include the manufacturing of crime. Criminal activity is such that stealth and strategy are necessary weapons in the arsenal of the police officer. However,

"A different question is presented when the criminal design originates with the officials of the government, and they implant in the mind of an innocent person the disposition to commit the alleged offense and induce its commission in order that they may prosecute."

…But to look to a statute for guidance in the application of a policy not remotely within the contemplation of Congress at the time of its enactment is to distort analysis. It is to run the risk, furthermore, that the court will shirk the responsibility that is necessarily in its keeping, if Congress is truly silent, to accommodate the dangers of overzealous law enforcement and civilized methods adequate to counter the ingenuity of modern criminals. The reasons that actually underlie the defense of entrapment can too easily be lost sight of in the pursuit of a wholly fictitious congressional intent.


Cruz v. State of Florida, 465 So. 2d 516 (1985)

The Casper court found that an otherwise un-predisposed passerby who chose to take the money did not acquiesce, but "succumbed to temptation.... to the lure of the bait."

Petitioner would have this court hold that where the only evidence of predisposition is the commission of the crime the police scenario was designed to elicit, there is an insufficient showing of predisposition, as a matter of law.

The entrapment defense arises from a recognition that sometimes police activity will induce an otherwise innocent individual to commit the criminal act the police activity seeks to produce. The United States Supreme Court has addressed the issue in four principal cases.

Hampton v. United States, 425 U.S. 484, 96 S.Ct. 1646, 48 L.Ed.2d 113 (1976);
United States v. Russell, 411 U.S. 423, 93 S.Ct. 1637, 36 L.Ed.2d 366 (1973);
Sherman v. United States, 356 U.S. 369, 78 S.Ct. 819, 2 L.Ed.2d 848 (1958);
Sorrells v. United States, 287 U.S. 435, 53 S.Ct. 210, 77 L.Ed. 413 (1932).


State of Florida v. Donald Casper, 417 So.2d 263 (1982)

Upon these facts, the decoy simply provided the opportunity to commit a crime to anyone who succumbed to the lure of the bait. Accordingly, we uphold the trial court's ruling that, as a matter of law, the defendant was entrapped.

None of the unsolved robberies or thefts involved the same type of victim or modus operandi of this case. The Sheriff's office had no suspects or identifications of possible suspects for the thefts and robberies and did not employ the decoy to catch any particular individual.


Newman v. United States, 299 F. 128, 131 (4th Cir.1924)

"It is well settled that decoys may be used to entrap criminals, and to present opportunity to one intending or willing to commit crime. But decoys are not permissible to ensnare the innocent and law-abiding into the commission of crime. When the criminal design originates, not with the accused, but is conceived in the mind of the government officers, and the accused is by persuasion, deceitful representation, or inducement lured into the commission of a criminal act, the government is estopped by sound public policy from prosecution therefore.”

Oh it also is apparent that the police are violating their own procedures when conducting stings according to these excerpts from a Problem-Oriented Guide for Police distributed by the US Department of Justice.

http://www.popcenter.org/responses/PDFs/sting_operations.pdf

From Page 8
The Internet
The Internet has made fraud much easier by providing offenders with an easy way to create false storefronts and even perfectly mimic the web pages of major businesses such as eBay. Sex offenders have also found in the Internet a convenient way to pretend that they are someone else and approach unsuspecting or vulnerable juveniles. However, the possibilities for masquerading as others are also available to police officers, so they may conduct sting operations that also use these methods of deception to trap suspects: they may put up their own false online storefronts and hang out in juvenile chat rooms.

From page 23
Internet stings that aim at tracking down Internet users require highly trained officers in the Internet’s technical aspects, as well as Internet service providers’ cooperation. However, a reasonably competent Internet user can put up a false web site, and it takes little skill to enter a teen chat room.

Why does everyone trust law enforcement more than they should? The comments in here seem to convey that trust that should not exist. The truth is, these law enforcement agencies are posing as children looking for sex with adults and that is why they are conducted on adult web sites and adult dating sites. The men arrested in stings are not searching for minors to victimize, these “minors” are searching for men to victimize and these stings amount to nothing more than virtue testing which is illegal.

Lusby v State of Florida So 2d 611 1987
We do not condone general forrays into the population at large by government agents to question at random the citizenry of this country to test their law abiding nature, i.e., virtue testing.

People always want to talk about entrapment but what they don’t understand is that there are two types of entrapment. The subjective entrapment defense says that the government agents are the ones that made me do what I did because of egregious conduct on their part. The objective entrapment defense says that the police are just creating crime and are not interrupting an ongoing criminal enterprise. I can make anyone guilty of something too if I use everything they say against them, encourage them to say it, condone the “illegal activity”, and then give them a place to be so I can arrest them. However, what these power and money hungry “law enforcement” agents do not realize is that it is NOT illegal to talk about sex with a minor if they are consenting to the conversation! Of course people are going to “go overboard” when the “minor” on the other end of the computer is an undercover officer wanting to make an arrest and does nothing to convince these men that they could be doing something wrong. These men are not thinking about the age of these “victims”. They are not even thinking about the fact that these undercover officers are even close to being a victim. The only thing that they were concerned with is the fact that they were irresponsibly talking about sex to a strange female and “she” consented to the conversation and encouraged the idea of sexual intercourse.

Since when has it become a crime to fantasize about having sex with a young, slutty teenage girl? Since when are people in this country held accountable for the words that come out of their mouth when participating in a mutual conversation? Law enforcement are doing nothing more than exploiting the age old fantasy that most men have to have intercourse with a young, sexy, and willing partner because they are tired of having sex with their “over the hill” wife or simply because they are suffering from a midlife crisis. Under these circumstances it might as well be illegal to even look at a sexy teenage girl and have lustful thoughts about her because she has her buttocks hanging out of her shorts and is wearing a tank top with no bra on making her nipples perfectly visible.

These internet stings are nowhere close to what the forefathers of this country had in mind when they created the Constitution, it is certainly not justice, and is not the legislative intent behind the child exploitation act. In fact, the forefathers of this Country were having sex and marrying women as soon as they hit puberty but for some reason nobody wants to bring that up. The word exploit according to dictionary.com means to take advantage of (a person, situation, etc), esp unethically or unjustly for one’s own ends. The only exploiting I see with cases such as these is being done by “law enforcement”. A person cannot be exploited if they are willing to be. Parents need to “grow up” and realize that our children are not innocent and an internet sting is NOT going to keep our children from having sex. Whether with another consenting teenager or another consenting adult, they will have sex. Especially while we continue to let the internet (riddled with porn), television (loaded with sex), and school (full of adults saying it’s okay to express themselves sexually while passing out condoms) raise our children.

These stings are illegal and are nothing more than objective entrapment. Visit the blogs at EDIT: MODERATOR: LINK REMOVED for supporting case law, stop being so obtuse, and help put a stop to this nonsense.