Is this just?

I am about to tell you a story concerning a police operation that went down in my home town this week and is getting a lot of attention in the local news. I am going to ask you to make a judgment on the principle involved here, in hopes that you will not get derailed by the specifics of the case or the crime the people are accused of. Too often, when this type of thing is discussed, people tend to focus excessively on the criminal or crime itself and don't think about the principle. Please try to ignore what it is these people are accused of and refrain from getting emotional about it. This issue is something I am up in the air about, so my title, "Is this just?" is a true question that I really want your input on. So remember, try to think about the principle here.

So this week our local police department set up a sting operation where they arrested nine men on charges of attempting to make contact with a minor for sex. You know the story: the cops pose as a 14 year old on the Internet, wait around for some gross old dude to solicit sex from them, then bust him when he comes to meet the kid.

I am wondering to what degree this sort of thing constitutes entrapment by the police department. Entrapment can be said to occur when a law enforcement agent induces a person to commit an offense which would be illegal and the person would otherwise have been unlikely to commit. I think the reasoning in these sorts of cases is that if they catch a guy online trying to hook-up for sex with a minor, then it is assumed that he does this all the time and that they are taking a dangerous predator out of society.

Three things that have always bothered me about these operations: (1) You cannot establish whether a predator has done such things before, at least prior to arresting him and interogating him. Part of determining if there is entrapment is figuring out whether the accused was already predisposed to commit the crime. But you would not know this until you had already arrested him, so it seems like a Catch-22.

(2) I have wondered whether it is just to charge someone with attempting to commit a crime when, due to the presence of the agent provocateur, no crime was actually committed. The druggie charged with trying to buy cocaine from an undercover police officer may have only been trying to buy what looked like cocaine but was actually sugar; yet he is charged with trying to purchase actual cocaine. The predator may have been talking to a 35 year old police sergeant on the Internet, but he is charged with attempting to have sex with a minor even though there was no actual minor involved. In both cases, the law seems to be focusing not on what is actually real, but what is in the defendant's mind. Regardless of how heinous some crimes are, I always get uncomfortable when I get the idea that the law is passing judgment on what people think.

(3) I wonder to what degree the agents "tempt" their prey to go along in these schemes. Humankind is weak, and it is true that any man may be tempted to do something, if the stimulation is there, that he may not have thought of doing otherwise. I am not a thief, but tempt me with a tipped over armored car on a lonely country road with the guards unconscious and three million dollars sitting in front of me, and I may do something I never would have done otherwise nor set out to do. Thus, I wonder to what degree some of these men caught and accused as predators are caught and enticed by the police in such a way that the temptation provided by the officers becomes the efficient cause of the accused's actions.

Okay, now that is not all. Listen to this, for this is where this case really gets weird. In addition to the nine men arrested, the local police are also going to arrest and charge 50 men who went online, made contact with the undercover agent, but decided against trying to set up a meeting because they were afraid of a police sting. In this case, the men talked to the agent (whom they thought was a kid), said they'd like to come meet them, but stated that they would not because it was too risky. Whatever you feel about what I described above, this one sounds fishy to me.

Aren't we happy that the men decided to not follow through on their desires? And isn't the fact that they didn't go to the sting because they were afraid of the police a good reason for not doing so? Is it now illegal to fantasize about doing things and then not do them? Yes I know it's not moral to fantasize about doing evil, but is it right for it to be illegal?

When I was 17 years old, my friend and I talked about how we could rob a local gas station. We knew somebody who worked there (an inside job) and knew how much we could get. We talked about when to do it, how to make it look like a real robbery and not an inside job, where to stash the money, etc. Every detail was worked out, and we laughed about it and said it would be "fun" to do. But it was only a mental exercise - I don't think any of were really willing to do it, and we all agreed that it would be too risky. Under the criteria invoked in the above scenario, I could have still been arrested for this, even though no crime had been committed and I intentionally stated my desire to not commit the crime for fear of getting caught.

The Supreme Court has gone different ways when handling entrapment cases, but the main criteria it looks at was decided in Sorrells v. United States (1932), where the court said that entrapment was determined by asking the following question:

Whether the defendant is a person otherwise innocent whom the government is seeking to punish for an alleged offense which is the product of the creative activity of its own officials.

This is what gets me thinking. "Person otherwise innocent" - you have no way of knowing they are otherwise innocent before you arrest them.

"Product of the creativity of its own officials" - Would any of these men have gone to meet what they thought was a 14 year old for sex had not a police agent been online soliciting for it?

In the case of these 50 other men who are being arrested for not going through with the sting, I think there could be a strong case that they have been entrapped, or even more so, that they have not done anything illegal. I can't see any way that talking about committing a crime and then not doing it is itself a crime.

With the nine who were actually arrested trying to meet the kid, I'm not so sure. I'm not sympathizer with pedophiles, but I do hold justice to be very important. So, what do you all think about this case?

Warning! If you are going to post, post about the question - don't respond with emotional comments like, "Boniface, how would you like it if your daughter got solicited by an online pervert!" I'm not defending these men in any way, but I said to focus on the principle, not the crime itself. To what degree, if any, does the police's behavior here constitute entrapment, and what of these 50 men who are being charged for not going through with the meeting?