Congratulations!

This posting is a shout-out to our friend and co-advocate Debi down in Florida. Her son was previously convicted and incarcerated from a police proactive sex sting. He just recently won his appeal and we are all so ridiculously happy for them.

My tongue, or fingers, often stumble over saying ‘congratulations’ in these cases, as there is truly never an actual victor. We all hope fervently that Debi’s son will remain free from this malicious plot now, but those of us who have shared his journey, with a similar one of our own, know the course of his life was taken from him.

I resist the urge, when told, to agree that winning an appeal, getting a reduced sentence, having your case dismissed pretrial are all ‘wins’. None of us have won here. We’ve only survived.

But it is also true that more and more of us are actually seeing what others could even remotely call ‘good luck’. I have seen more reversals, dismissals, and acquittals in the last year than I ever did in the four years before that – by far! Is it just because I am looking harder now? More involved? I don’t think so. I think there has been a minor shift, somewhere, somehow.

Was it caused by all our hard work? Maybe but I doubt it. Yet as our numbers grow, so have our ‘wins’ – be those even small victories. And to a group of people paying the price for an insidious government scam such as perversely incentivizing victimless thought crimes, those victories can, and are, adding up.

Here’s to Debi and her son! May we share more and more victories throughout the year and beyond, until these stings are finally stopped for good.