Monday, August 17, 2009

Framed predator gets life sentence

Wired mag reports:
It’s official. There’s nobody in the chat rooms but pedophiles and undercover police.

On Thursday, a federal appeals court upheld the conviction of an Indiana man whose online efforts to proposition underage girls led him to not one, not two, but three undercover cops, none of whom apparently knew about the others. ...

Despite the prosecutorial missteps, the panel upheld Daniel’s conviction, ruling that the additional chat logs still showed his intent to commit a crime. Daniel is serving a sentence of 17-and-a-half years in prison, followed by supervised release for life.

There’s no evidence in the record that he ever succeeded in talking with a real underage girl.
I am all for locking up child predators, but there was no child involved, and no child. The prosecutors argued in court that there were children in the online chats, but they were just just entrapping cops. I think that these long sentences should be reserved for those who cause real harm to real people.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Yeah, let's WAIT for them to rape and murder our daughters... Dude, come on, he obviously WANTED to commit these crimes. "Intent" to manufacture drugs and "intent" to distribute can land you years and years in prison, and drugs are pretty much victimless crimes (at least the ones the police like to go after--pot, LSD, etc), unlike rape. JFC dude WTF?

Roger said...

When they bust someone for intent to distribute drugs, it is because the guy has a warehouse full of drugs already, and not because they caught him chatting about getting high.

No, it is not obvious that this guy intended to commit crimes. People say a lot of goofy stuff in sex chat rooms. Some have weird fantasies but never commit a crime. Maybe he is just an idiot who foolishly fell for a trap.