Guilty till proven innocent!
This is usually said as a joke, or snidely as a smear on the injustice that takes place in our judicial system everyday. But rarely do Americans actually believe it’s true. My son didn’t believe he did anything wrong when we went to meet an adult for consensual sex. In his interrogation they said he was ‘in the hot seat’. He replied, honestly, ‘No I’m not’. Yet in some state you are required to prove your innocence when accused of a crime! Wait, what?!?!?
Under federal law, the government has the burden of showing that a defendant has a predisposition beyond a reasonable doubt. Jacobson v. U.S.,503U.S. 540, 546, 112 S.Ct 1535, 118 L.Ed.2d 174 (1992).
In WASHINGTON, the burden falls to the defendant to establish the defense by a ‘preponderance of the evidence’. And that evidence is viewed in FAVOR OF THE STATE!
In a case similar to Jace, ‘Chapman’ wholeheartedly engaged in law enforcement’s inducement, which, under Washington law, is evidence of predisposition but, arguably, is not evidence of predisposition under federal law.
At a typical trial in WA state for these illegal proactive stings, the prosecutor will say things along these lines (this is actually taken from a real case transcript) to prospective jurors:
“anybody ever . . . actually been on Backpage.com? Heard of it? How many of you were aware of the recent news story that the CEO[(chief executive officer)] of Backpage was just arrested for running the largest online brothel in the world?”
The prosecutor continued:
What strikes me as one of my difficulties in this particular case is, is that—so one of the things I intend to do during this case is to present a detective who is going to walk people through the Craigslist Casual Encounter section, and I assure you it’s going to be eyeopening. But I also am not surprised at all that not one person in here raised their hand when I said, “Have you been on the Casual Encounter section?”
Because if you have, you are not going to raise your hand in a group full of people, especially that are all strangers, and say, “You know what? I saw a whole bunch of naked people who are offering sex for money, and oh, by the way, they were offering kids for sale, too,”because it’s kind of difficult to explain what you were doing there, right?I mean, it’s not like you just happened to . . . .
This is casual encounters where you have to click and it actually says,“Are you over 18 to go in here?”. . .. . . .. . .
I am telling you, you have to say, “Yes, I am over 18.” And you know how you do that? Click. And it’s just that simple. So I guess then here—so here is the question: How do I find the people, the person, if there is any, the people who have been on the Casual Encounter section of Craigslist and don’t want to talk about it? How do I do that?
The advertisements that [the Task Force is] using now are on Craigslist, and they are in the Casual Encounter section. . . .The Casual Encounter section of Craigslist is filth like almost no other. . . .Sergeant Rodriguez will tell you about some of the advertisements that they have come across when they do these operations because not only does Sergeant Rodriguez post the advertisements, but while he is responding to people who are responding to him, he is also looking up other ads, people who are offering up children, people who are offering up acts of bestiality, with animals, people offering up all kinds of stuff you cannot believe, and the filthier the better in some respects.
Here is a basic craigslist casual encounters post. Some may find it repulsive, offensive, or insensitive, but what it isn’t is filth. Not illegal. These are human beings looking for a connection with other human beings. Nothing unnatural about it.
I have placed ads on casual encounters in my life. I have even found a few boyfriends off the page. Am I supposed to feel bad about it? Cheap? Dirty? I do not.
Yes, there are a lot of graphic pictures and I am sure some people are looking for or offering up illegal services. But I’ve also seen hookers on a street corner, drug dealers standing out front of establishments, and any number of ‘sketch’ offerings. Doesn’t mean I went to that location looking for those people. Doesn’t mean there is nothing but that offered at those locations. ‘Sketch’ follows real people. Here are hookers on the subway platform – did these people take the subway to find hookers?
The Lady Justice Myth 
Many cases are entrapment(subjective) as predisposition is not present. The failure of courts to realize this is a shame considering how much cops and icac bend multiple rules. The consequences of this goes beyond serving time, sex registry is the modern day Scarlet Letter, that should be applied to rapist and true pedos not people persuaded or encourage to commit a crime where police facilitated and pushed for the opportunity where no child exists. If you want a slap on the risk, at worst these sting related cases should not carry the sex registry unless you have priors, child porn, or have been convicted of any sexual offense in the past with adults or children.We all know the registry is punitive .
How is it America is the only nation that does these stings and catch 20 plus in 3 day operations while Canada catches 13 pedos in a EIGHT month operation… The numbers do not add up and the UK do not conduct these supposed proactive stings. Wake up people.. Please we need voices to be heard.
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In Texas, we have been made fun of for believing that you are innocent until proven guilty. There is no such thing, and apparently we were very stupid for not knowing that “innocent until proven guilty” does not exist. This has all come from the criminal defense attorneys who are supposed to be defending you.
Everybody who is brought into this system is guilty, unless you can prove yourself to be innocent, and they pretty much make it impossible for anybody to do that. They make sure that you cannot use any kind of evidence, information, etc., that would clearly prove you are not guilty of what you have been accused of. These things are just not allowed in court. However, the made up stories the police create to have the evidence they need for a conviction are very much allowed. For us to want to use the hard video evidence we have that shows police were clearly very abusive and completely created this made up story they are now using is a big no no in Midland, TX. “We cannot disrespect the police..” We cannot expose them for being the corrupt idiots they are. We just have to accept that we are just one of the unlucky ones that this has been done to. How dare we want to expose them for what they are doing??! They have worked very hard to get us to shut up about this.
You are 100% right about having to click to agree to go on to Craigslist. No one goes to an adult site looking for minors, and I have an incredibly difficult time believing that we have teenagers going on to adult sites to hook up and even pushing for sex with adults. What we do have going on is human traffickers prostituting women and even minors. However, are these human traffickers really taking the time to have social conversations with people on adult sites where they are creating stories to appeal to who they target, then they offer (and many times even pushing) for FREE sex, just for fun? How is what police are doing addressing this real problem, if they are offering and pushing free sex with minors? This is the reason why our Texas representatives are defending these sting operations. They are supposedly targeting this huge problem we have here. However, they want to hide the fact that no human trafficker is going to offer a minor on an adult site as that (a minor) and certainly not for free.
Some of these police officers are just doing whatever it takes to get those numbers up and get as many convictions as they can. They just want to look like they are doing their jobs, even if they are not, and even worse, they don’t give a damn if they’re catching innocent people and ruining lives. All they care about is about trying to make themselves look like the heroes they are not. It is a fact, that we do still have many people working in our system who have no business doing this kind of work. They have no interest in helping anyone or doing any good for anyone. They are simply interested in trying to make themselves look good, and they will do whatever and step on whoever they have to, to get what they want. There needs to be accountability. We need laws and programs to protect the people from these ill intended people who are working in our system for the wrong reasons. The reason it keeps happening is because there is no accountability. How much longer are we going to allow for these things to go on? How many more people does it need to be done to before our government starts doing more to protect the rights of people and protect us all from people working in our system who are using their power to abuse others?
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Some of these young men going on to these adult sites are also looking for experience they do not have. Some may be exploring sexuality. They are trying to figure themselves out, and so they will go somewhere where they can find others who are putting themselves out there and offering this. This is complete opposite from being a sex predator.
Some have a big deficit in social skills. They don’t approach people in person because they lack the confidence to this. So, they go on tonsites like his for people who are putting themselves out there. Again, this is complete opposite from being a predator.
A sex predator will work at convincing others to have sex with him/her. This is exactly what police are doing to catch these supposed predators they are catching on adult sites. In alot of these cases, it is the police who are being the sex predators because they are the ones talking the other person into sex. That’s what sex predators do!! They do the convincing, and this is what makes a predator a dangerous person. This is why it’s so wrong for police to do this. They are not catching true predators because they, themselves are the ones doing the preying. In order to catch true predators, they would have to allow the predators to come to them and convince them to have sex with them (the predator). Apparently, most of them (police) are not good at this. So, they are having to create it all by doing the actual preying themselves, just to get what they want/need.
Believe it or not, many men (especially young men) are not aware that many prostitutes are being forced to prostitute themselves. They truly believe that they are doing it because they want to, like it, want the money, etc.
Individuals who are of different sexual orientations are likely to use prostitute services because they are exploring and working on figuring themselves out. This does not make them sex predators. Like I said before, sex predators will work at convincing others to have sex with them. This is not what they are doing.
If anything, it is discriminatory and bigoted to label them sex predators for doing this.
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This logic also applies to those that are addicted to porn and end up with random CP images that are not the content that they are looking for but those images end up bringing the law down on them with severe mandatory minimums for never wanting to look at a child or seeking out CP.
This does not absolve those that create it and those that distribute it (like the FBI). The method that LEOs are using these days to try to fight child porn is doing nothing about prevention, because as you have said in this blog… It’s not about stranger danger but “beware of your friends and family”.
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