FL - Officers bend rules to boost sex sting arrest totals

Sheriff Grady Judd

Original Article (Video available)

08/09/2014

By Noah Pransky

This is the first of a two-part series examining how law enforcement is blurring the lines on due process.

POLK COUNTY - In the decade since Chris Hansen and "To Catch a Predator" popularized Internet sex stings, more than 1,200 men in Florida alone have been arrested, accused of preying on underage teens and children for sex.

But as the stings put more and more men behind bars, detectives are working harder and harder to keep up their arrest numbers. And the tactics they're using to put alleged sexual offenders in jail are sweeping up large numbers of law-abiding men, too.

A yearlong investigation by 10 Investigates reveals many of the men whose mugshots have been paraded out by local sheriffs in made-for-TV press conferences were not seeking to meet children online. Instead, they were minding their own business, looking for other adults, when detectives started to groom and convince them to break the law.

While detectives used to post ads suggesting an underage teen or child was available for sex, they now routinely post more innocuous personal ads of adults on traditional dating sites. When men – many of them under 25 with no criminal history - respond, officers switch the bait and typically indicate their age is really 14 or 15 years old. However, sometimes the storyline isn't switched until the men, who were looking for legal love, already start falling for the undercover agent.

According to arrest affidavits inspected by 10 Investigates, law enforcement is also now routinely making first contact with men who have done nothing wrong, responding to their ads on dating sites like PlentyOfFish.com. After men start conversing with what they think are adults, officers change the age they claim to be, but try to convince the men to continue the conversation anyway.

Other examples include undercover officers showing interest in a man, then later introducing the idea of having sex with the undercover's "child." If the men indicate they weren't interested, they were still often arrested for just talking to the adult.

Critics of the stings, including a number of prominent Tampa Bay law enforcement leaders, tell 10 News the operations make for better press conferences than they do crime fighting. Many of the men who are arrested for sexual predator crimes see little jail time.

But Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, when asked about over-aggressive detectives, instead went on the offensive: "The concern (I have) is that you inflate your investigative reporting to make it glitzy."

Rest of the story

FL - Law enforcement may have entrapped alleged sexual predators

Operation Home Alone

Original Article

01/29/2014

By Noah Pransky

PINELLAS COUNTY - A document obtained by 10 News indicates law enforcement may have crossed the line when trying to round up alleged sexual predators over the weekend -- and defense attorneys say entrapment cases could be built around the evidence.

The multi-agency sting, led by the Pinellas Co. Sheriff's Office and Clearwater Police Department, netted 35 arrests in "Operation Home Alone." The effort was coordinated by the region's Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force.

ICAC guidelines instruct undercover officers to "allow the investigative target to set the tone, pace, and subject matter of the online conversation."

But a Florida man, who says he responded to the officers' Craigslist ad, sent 10 News an alleged e-mail chain that indicates law enforcement is willing to bend, or break, their own ICAC guidelines to get "targets" to talk about sex with children.

In the exchange, an officer posing as a 12-year-old girl repeatedly engaged the man, who indicated she was too young to be on Craigslist. The topic of sex was also first introduced by the officer, an apparent violation of ICAC guidelines.

"There's no question they blur the lines," said defense attorney Jeffrey Brown of law enforcement officers. "But I think they can blur the lines because the ultimate resolution for a defense attorney is to go to trial."

And Brown said juries seldom have sympathy for accused predators, no matter what means were used to obtain evidence. He also said bending ICAC rules isn't necessarily breaking the law.

Brown added that the officers gave defense attorneys another possible entrapment argument by posting "casual encounters" ads on adult websites and only later suggesting they were 14 or younger.

Pinellas Co. Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, who was at the forefront of the Monday press conference announcing the 35 arrests, didn't make himself available to 10 Investigates for this story. But an agency spokesperson said they were reviewing the document provided by 10 Investigates.

"We are confident it was done within the process of the law and within all legal boundaries," said Pinellas Co. Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Cecilia Barreda.

See Also:

• Read the PDF of emails from Florida Scandal (Blog, Facebook)

GA - Entrapment defense is seldom successful

Entrapment?

Original Article

01/26/2014

By Emma Witman

Burden of proof remains on suspects who claim enticement by law officers

Undercover law enforcement officers from local and federal Northeast Georgia agencies recently have netted arrests by posing as poachers, drug dealers, militia members and 15-year-old girls.

Such investigative tactics often rankle the targets, who claim a pure mind was pushed to criminality by an officer, alluding to the legal concept of “entrapment.”

But that’s a legal defense far more difficult to prove than perhaps it’s often construed, legal experts said.

“The government can stick any amount of meat in front of your nose and even have you open your mouth, but you’re the one who chooses to bite,” Circuit Defender Brad Morris said.

Georgia criminal code says that a person is not guilty of a crime if entrapped. Entrapment occurs when the idea and intent of committing a crime originated with a government officer, employee or agent who has additionally by “undue persuasion, incitement, or deceitful means, induced the accused to commit the act which the accused would not have committed except for the conduct of such officer.”

In decades of practice, Morris said he has never seen an effective entrapment defense.

“Entrapment technically is a defense. It just hardly ever works,” he said.

In federal court, a defendant can deny committing a crime and simultaneously argue he was entrapped into committing a crime, Assistant U.S. Attorney William McKinnon said. The burden is on the defendant to provide such evidence.
- We thought the intent of the "justice" system was for the legal system to prove the person committed a crime, not the other way around?

“If the defendant is unable to make that showing in the trial, then the defendant is not entitled to an entrapment instruction with the jury,” McKinnon said. “The trial judge decides whether there’s a minimum amount to even raise it with the jury.”

An entrapment instruction was requested in the trial of two Toccoa men convicted Jan. 17 on domestic terrorism charges, McKinnon said. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Story did not find sufficient evidence that an undercover agent had persuaded the men to conspire to make Ricin with castor beans.

Yet Georgia code doesn’t allow defendants to both deny their conduct and assert entrapment, or essentially the “I didn’t do it, and if I did, I was entrapped” defense.

Russell Gabriel, a law professor at the University of Georgia, said entrapment is somewhat analogous to self-defense in that sense.

“They are both what are called affirmative defenses,” Gabriel said. “You have to admit the deed, but this is a legal excuse for having done it, and those are jury questions.”

Read the rest of the article