Here’s a decision that is guaranteed to be misinterpreted by the public. From the Arizona Daily Star:
Court limits TV-sex-sting charges
Reporters pretending to be teens on the Internet to lure adults may be great television. But the Arizona Supreme Court ruled Wednesday it isn’t enough to get their targets arrested.In a unanimous decision, the justices concluded people lured to meet with what they think are teen girls can’t be charged if it turns out the person doing the luring is not a minor, but in fact a TV reporter — or any other adult, for that matter. The court concluded charging someone with seeking out a minor for sexual purposes, by definition, requires an actual minor.
The only exception, they said, is if the person doing the luring is a police officer.
But if you read the opinion, there’s a big catch: the Court’s ruling is that such cases have to be charged as an attempted luring of a minor, rather than the substantive offense. So yes, media undercover investigations that persuade adults to try to lure what they think are kids online actually will get the adults arrested and charged — just for the attempt rather than the substantive offense.
Unless the adult is unusually short, of course. Thanks to Frank Salamone for the link.
It seems to me that Ohio solved this problem, albeit in a way that which caused many questions about media ethics. In order to allow the Perverted Justice group work with Dateline for the sting, law enforcement was required to deputize those running the sting as temporary deputies.
Obviously this takes away from the requirement that a sting must be run by a police officer. However, it caused many to question the role of the media in such a situation. Many people question the idea of the media hiring a group to work towards putting people in prison, arguing that the role of the media is to report the news– not cause the news. Further, the fact that in Ohio the consultants were deputized forces one to question, not per se, the legality of the arrest, but whether or not the media is acting as it should.
Ought the media be allowed to hire consultants who become deputized for the purpose of running sting operations to put people in jail? Obviously the fact that this case is about child predators creates a de facto level of acquiescence. However, if this were a crime of a different nature, would we question the involvement of the media?
I think deputizing the guys from Perverted Justice is an interesting way to meet the requirements. However, it seems to get messy by involving the media between Perverted Justice and the agency.