Teh One Who Knocks
10-15-2013, 12:12 PM
Rather long article, but a very interesting read
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Everyone thinks they've been "entrapped" by police, but some men actually are.
by Nate Anderson - ars technica
http://i.imgur.com/ygG9sIM.jpg
n 2011, 43-year-old Army veteran Edwin "Trey" Gennette lived just outside Pensacola, Florida, with a pet possum and a talking Ford Mustang. One warm June evening, he began poking around the "Casual Encounters" section of Craigslist, where he found an ad promising a novel erotic situation. "2 sisters seeking a man that handle both [of] us," it said. "We are ready for a hot night, are you?"
He was. But when he e-mailed the address in the ad, Gennette received a quick response from a woman named Amber, making clear that only one of the sisters was 19. "My lil sis is in town visiting me for the summer," wrote Amber. "She is 14, you ok with that?"
"Well I think she is a bit young, lol but depends on what you have in mind," Gennette wrote back. He sent Amber a photo of himself with his pet possum. Amber sent back a photo showing two young women on a boat. Gennette and Amber chatted for a while over e-mail, sharing weekend plans. Gennette suggested the sisters come over to see the possum, which was recovering from veterinary surgery to her "female parts." He offered to give the two girls a ride in his Mustang.
But the older sister made clear that "we host only," and she kept pushing Gennette for details of what exactly he might want to do with younger sister Erin.
Gennette: hmmm, maybe you can twist my arm, lol I have some things I need to do tomorrow am, and since you cant come here......but I can be pursuaded, lol
Amber: pursuaded???? how do u want us to do that? so what do u want to do with us
Gennette: well im sure you could figure something out on how to pursuade me, im up for anything dear
Amber: we like a man that will tell us want he wants to do, not us doing all the work
Gennette: oh I wouldn't let you do all the work, duh, lol but while driving my car, i d have to focus on the road for sure, when do you want to get together?
Amber: do u realize that its me and my lil sis
Gennette appeared reticent about actually following through, talking about needing "persuasion" and wanting to "keep things clean so to speak, lol" when it came to the little sister. But Amber continued to press, asking:
Amber: what r u going to do to us
Gennette: things that are pleasurable, believe me, lol
Amber: like what???? we like details? and love to hear, plus i need to prep her. u have to make sure you are gentle with her and dont hurt her
Gennette: prep her? what does that consist of? lol I have to show the details but they will be satisfactory, promise … now I have one cute underage sister and another young cute of age sister, is this all consensual? im assuming yes, but I am still curious what you mean by prepping her
Amber: u r right. one underage sis, and one of age sis. everything is consensual. we r getting horny, u? we like to hear it, let us know what u r going to do to us
Despite the obvious warning signs, Gennette continued the conversation and appeared to come around to the idea of sexual activity with Erin—but the exact nature of this activity remained vague. Gennette told Amber that he would show her special attention "with my tongue," and Amber pressed yet again for information about "lil sis. she thinks u r leaving her out. :(" Gennette told Amber not to worry because "nobody gets left out."
http://i.imgur.com/E8FEoXp.png
The photo of "two sisters" sent to Gennette by investigators.
Two nights after responding to Amber's ad, Gennette agreed to meet the sisters at their home. But he refused to promise anything more explicit than "a lot of smiles," so Amber herself got more explicit—and also suggested that Gennette was a coward.
"my lil sis just said that she does not want u to come over until she knows what u want to do with her," Amber wrote. "i have to agree with her, bc i need to make sure she does not get hurt. we really want this to go down, but it just seems like u r scared. we r so ready for u. u would have to bring rubbers for her, bc i cant have my 14yo baby sis pregers."
At 6pm, Gennette responded, "I will bring those," and he promised to be "easy and gentle and you can help me." He also noted that the whole situation was "almost hard to believe."
http://i.imgur.com/hxTGbqw.jpg
Gennette's mugshot.
Amber then agreed that he could come over and provided an address, so Gennette hopped into his gray Mustang to make the 30-minute drive. When he arrived, he walked up to the house and knocked. Burly policemen in bulletproof vests burst out of the door, dragged Gennette back inside the house, and forced him to the ground. When he arose, he was in handcuffs—and charged as a sex offender. There had been no Amber and no Erin.
Held on a $300,000 bond, Gennette spent three weeks in jail before he came up with the bond. While there, his name appeared repeatedly in local accounts about the police sting—dubbed Operation Blue Shepherd—that had caught him and 24 others. According to a news account at the time, "An officer said most of the suspects admitted they were coming inside for sex. One said he was actually coming to chastise the parents. Another said he was coming to play Dungeons and Dragons." Police released surveillance video of the arrests to the media.
"We obviously feel the operation was very successful," Pensacola Police Chief Chip Simmons told the media. "That's bittersweet, though. It's successful that we got 25 people off the street, but I'm also disappointed there were 25 people willing to do this type of an act."
Mugshot aggregation websites, which typically charge a fee to remove the image, quickly posted Gennette's photo. "Have fun in prison, punk. Do you know what they do to diddlers in prison?" one commenter wrote beneath the picture. Another added, "Prison is too good for this scum, cut off his balls and feed him to the gators."
When Gennette posted bond, he returned home to find it had been searched by police looking for additional evidence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2siqp0xoEuY
Operation Blue Shepherd takedowns.
"As soon as the word was out and the media reported the story, my life was destroyed," Gennette told me this month, describing those early days. "To say I struggled, and still am, is an understatement, and I found myself practically homeless a few times." Several Florida men charged in similar online stings have killed themselves after their arrests, but Gennette said that he found support from family and friends who "were completely supportive once I explained to them the truth."
That truth, as he saw it, was that his life had been thrown off course due to police injustice. He had been on an adult website where people were known to indulge in all sorts of lies about their ages and situations. "How is it that just because law enforcement tells you they are a certain age that you have to believe them, especially if the photograph they send you clearly is that of a more mature woman well into their 20s?" he responded when I asked him why he didn't stop talking when a 14-year-old was introduced into the situation.
"I never truly believed that what they told me was true, and I was confused to why the undercover officer kept on pushing and pushing and constantly harassing me into trying to get me to say something! Law enforcement were the ones who were soliciting me to commit a crime that was determined I was not predisposed to commit."
(This common "it was all just a fantasy, and I thought she was an adult" defense has been tried by many caught in online stings, including former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, a major public player in the run-up to the Iraq War. It generally fails. In 2009, Ritter was caught masturbating on a webcam for a "15-year-old girl" who turned out to be a small town cop. He was sentenced to prison time in Pennsylvania in 2012.)
Unlike many of those arrested in such stings, Gennette decided to fight back. He launched an activist project called "Florida Scandal" that collected stories from those caught in similar situations and offered to help them.
For his own case, Gennette was assigned a public defender who helped him argue that police had entrapped him. The government had been the one to press the idea of a 14-year-old sister, his lawyer argued, saying that Gennette had shown no sexual intent toward the fictitious "Erin." For instance, Gennette had repeatedly used the terms "you" and "you'll" in reference to Amber without "stating a commonly used southern phrase to include the sister by stating 'y'all' or 'you all' or 'you girls.'" Even the government agent playing "Amber" appeared to recognize the issue, repeatedly bringing Gennette's conversation back to Erin.
What about the end of the conversation, the part in which Gennette finally and explicitly agreed to bring "rubbers" to help "Erin" from getting "preggers"? This was only "vague sexual innuendo towards the sister," said Gennette's lawyer, and it had come only after "Amber had implored [Gennette] to say he would do something with her sister a total of 15 times over the course of approximately 36 hours."
While entrapment might sound like a long-shot argument, the kind of thing every scumbag predator would say after being caught in a sting, it's an argument increasingly being made to state and federal courts across the country as these sorts of online stings multiply. Judges are taking it seriously—and some defendants are winning their cases.
Stung
http://i.imgur.com/Qdolrho.jpg
Gennette's situation isn't unique; Florida cops run an amazing number of these online, child sex stings on sites like Craigslist. Here's a partial list of such operations from the first seven months of 2013:
Operation Nightlight, January 2013: Three men arrested in Gainesville
Operation Cardea, January 2013: 50 arrested by 200 investigators in Seminole County
Operation Intercept II, February 2013: 30 arrested in Sarasota County
Operation No Soliciting, March 2013: 15 arrested in St. John's County
Operation Green Shepherd II, March 2013: 35 arrested in Manatee County
Operation April Fools, April 2013: 20 arrested in Tallahassee
Operation Pegasus, June 2013: Seven arrested in Gainesville; local police blame the city's newspaper for keeping numbers down by publishing news of the initial arrests
Unnamed "travelers' operation," June 2013: 41 suspects (including one woman) arrested by Polk County officers (see all of their mugshots and charges)
Operation Sand Spider, July 2013: 11 arrested in Brevard County; one man was a registered sex offender who allegedly brought a 17-year-old male with him to the home
The operations are coordinated by the state's Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces. ICAC task forces operate across the country under the auspices of the Department of Justice, and they bring together local cops, state lawyers, and federal agents to "develop an effective response to child pornography cases and the sexual assault and abuse of children facilitated by technology." They also provide significant grant money and training opportunities to investigators.
ICAC task forces oversee other types of operations, but one of their signatures is the one-week "online advertisement" sting of the kind that caught Gennette. Thanks to a formerly confidential planning document released after a September 2012 sting dubbed "Operation Green Shepherd," the scale and operation of these stings has become clear. Most operations begin with the rental of a home in the target community, a home that will become the base of operations for 30 or more people during the week that the operation runs. Security is paramount; no police uniforms or cars are allowed in the vicinity of the house, and personnel are transported to work from an off-site location. They must remain at the home from 1:30pm until at least 2:00am each day.
Why does it take 30 people to arrest solo strangers knocking on the front door? It's a labor-intensive operation, involving drumming up suspects, performing "open source intelligence," installing hidden cameras, filling out police paperwork, cuffing suspects, dealing with suspects' vehicles, and executing search warrants on suspects' homes after arrest. Each operation requires:
House commander
House supervisor
Chat supervisor
Analysts
Case agents
Chatters
Vehicle team
Investigative support team
Arrest team
Surveillance team
Prisoner transport/takedown team
Audio-visual and IT support
Forensic support
A "house scribe" to handle documentation
The week begins with ICAC-trained chatters who post ads online and then engage those who reply. The attention is lavished on Internet sites like Craigslist and Backpage.com because online classified ads have become a go-to location for men seeking sex. An August 2013 study (PDF) from the Arizona State University School of Social Work examined the 15 largest cities in the US and generated estimates for how many men sought sex from these online classified ads. "On average, within the fifteen markets explored, one out of every 20 males over the age of 18 in a metropolitan city area was soliciting online sex ads," the study found. "The findings ranged from approximately one out of every five males (Houston, 21.4 percent) to less than one out of 166 males (San Francisco, 0.6 percent)."
The chatters work on laptops at desks and kitchen tables, relying on services like the law enforcement-only tool Callyo if suspects demand a phone call. (One of Callyo's "covert" products is "recorded UC [undercover] phone lines.")
As they interact with suspects throughout the week, the chatters use a Web-based "deconfliction tool" to make sure that multiple chatters aren't going after the same target. According to a grant application from the Department of Justice, which funds the tool, the system lets any law enforcement officer look up a target's name, nickname, e-mail address, phone number, IP address, or physical address—then see immediately if any other agent or agency is also engaged with the same subject.
Deconfliction has grown in importance over the last few years; so many agencies now run stings that the chances of a suspect talking to several different police agencies at once are non-trivial. In 2011, Charles Sumner responded to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) post on Craigslist which advertised "Young one ready for the experience, W4M." Sumner said he would provide the fake 14-year-old child a "slow, loving, kind experience," but he wasn't invited to the undercover home; instead, he was taken off the FDLE officer's target list after a deconfliction tool showed that he was already talking with another Florida cop from Tallahassee, who was also posing as a 14-year-old girl on Craigslist. Sumner was eventually invited to the undercover home by this second officer.
While chatters talk to people like Sumner, analysts attempt to identify targets by name using clues in their communications. To do this, they have a huge variety of tools, starting with the obvious: open source intelligence. With a partial name, username, or e-mail address, search engines can make it simple to find more complete information. Analysts can also query law enforcement and state databases, such as Florida's Driver and Vehicle Information Database, FDLE records, and police case management systems. By the time someone like Sumner walks up to the door, the police should know plenty about him and may have already prepped evidence preservation letters and subpoenas for his online data.
Suspects who provide explicit statements of sexual interest in an underage child are eventually provided the address of the target home. Once invited to the house, the suspect will be arrested no matter what he does. Generally, the arrest team waits for a knock on the door, then takes down the suspect and handcuffs him. But even if the suspect has second thoughts and just drives on past the house, the police are watching; a surveillance team follows him out of the area and stops the vehicle.
In either case, the vehicle team "renders the car clear of other occupants" and takes the suspect's car into the garage for a search. Search of Sumner's vehicle, for instance, revealed a box of condoms, five types of lube, sex toys, a vibrator, and spare batteries.
Back inside the house, each suspect is taken to an interview room with a case detective who reads each man his rights and asks for consent to search the suspect's home to seize computers and cell phones. If consent is not forthcoming, a local judge is on standby throughout the week to sign off on search warrants. In either case, the investigative support team drives out to each man's home and seizes his computer equipment. Sumner's home computer and cell phone revealed "85 images of young-looking females in sexually suggestive poses or predicaments."
The suspect is then turned over to the transport team and taken to prison—and everyone gets into position for the next suspect's arrival.
What's most amazing about these stings is that they work at all. Police publicize their operations widely; Manatee County even releases video of the arrests to its YouTube page. (You can watch the Operation Green Shepherd team in action below.) Even the cops can't believe the technique keeps working. "Despite the fact our detectives have conducted nine of these operations since 2006; despite the extensive media coverage when we talk about the numerous arrests; despite the fact we make no secret about putting suspects in jail—there are those who continue to travel to Polk County to have sex with a child," Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said after a sting operation concluded in 2013.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EtXJMsrxb1o
Inside the Operation Green Shepherd target house.
Weeks or months later, as the cases grind through the court system, the suspects who don't plead guilty usually claim entrapment—as Sumner did. Many of these claims fail, especially when the suspects respond to an ad that clearly suggests an underage sexual encounter.
And the basic right of the police to use sex as a hook has long been upheld by the courts. As the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals put it in a key ruling from 1987, "Many people in our society may find the deceptive use of sex in law enforcement to be morally offensive. Nonetheless, 'in order to apprehend those engaged in serious crime, government agents may lawfully use methods that are neither appealing nor moral if judged by abstract norms of decency.'" Thus, it was not surprising that in 2013, a federal appeals court disagreed that Sumner had been entrapped; his 10-year sentence was upheld.
Gennette went through the same process, but he never abandoned his conviction that he had been entrapped by the police. To understand why, we need to take a look at entrapment—and how it applies to these increasingly common proactive stings.
Entrapment
Entrapment is a legal argument under which a suspect's guilt doesn't matter.
When 53-year-old California man Gregory Aguirre showed up at a Carl's Jr. burger joint near Huntington Beach in 2010 after saying he would pay $100 for sex to a "13-year-old" he had met on Craigslist, his entrapment defense didn't depend on arguing that he had really expected to meet an adult who had simply been role-playing. (Though Aguirre did also claim this.) As the California appellate judge overseeing his case put it in 2012, "Entrapment is about the actions of the police, not the guilt of the defendant."
http://i.imgur.com/RSVsfr1.jpg
Gregory Aguirre
In that case, the government argued that most people would have—and that Aguirre should have—walked away from the whole situation after hearing that the "girl" involved was 13. But that argument is all about the defendant's actions and provides no room for discussing police conduct. The judge called it "circuitous" and said it "leaves no situation where the defendant can assert entrapment as a defense."
In most jurisdictions, the relevant legal standard for entrapment involves two key questions. First, was the defendant "induced" by police to commit a crime? Police are allowed to provide mere opportunities for crime, but their cases get weaker the more pressure they bring to bear.
"Our analysis suggests the government should not be in the business of testing the will of law-abiding citizens with elaborate (if improbable) fantasies of sensuous teenagers desperate to engage in sexual acts with random middle-aged men," wrote the judge handling Aguirre's appeal.
But the key here is "law-abiding citizens." If the government can show that the suspect had a "predisposition" toward the particular crime at issue—the second key question—the entrapment argument swings in favor of the police. Thus, in the Sumner case, his many photographs of children and the ease with which he consented to the encounter convinced a judge that Sumner had a predisposition.
Aguirre had no previous criminal record, though, and he did not actually meet up with the "girl" until eight days after the initial Craigslist post. He was browsing adult-oriented forums when he found the ad, and his "manhood" was repeatedly denigrated by the officer ("I think u all talk mr MAN")—a form of pressure. A psychologist who evaluated Aguirre found him to have no unusual sexual interest in children.
The judge in Aguirre's case wrote that he did not mean "to endorse the practice of pursuing casual sex on a Craigslist forum," and he concluded that the defendant was "gullible" for believing the whole lurid tale. But he agreed that a reasonable jury might have found entrapment here; Aguirre's case was sent back for a new trial, one in which the jury would get the chance to make a finding of entrapment.
The officer who had posted the ad which snagged Aguirre was Detective Alan Caouette of the Huntington Beach Police Department. Caouette specializes in prostitution, pimping, and pandering cases and has been involved in numerous Craigslist stings in California.
http://i.imgur.com/jM9g1Ui.jpg
Venson Villapando
Caouette could expend significant effort on these cases. One of his Craigslist ads, which had the heading "looking to get by in hard time," attracted 100 respondents back in 2009. One of them was 25-year-old Venson Villapando, who wrote back on July 9, "hey I want to have fun… what do you have in mind… anything is possible." Caouette responded that "she" was 13—and that Villapando would have to pay $100. He quickly agreed, but no meeting was actually scheduled. (Villapando was also lying about his own age, saying that he was 21.)
Instead, the correspondence dragged on. Messages were exchanged on July 10, 11, 14, and 25. August arrived, and the two wrote each other multiple times throughout the month; still, nothing happened. The pair talked throughout September, and Caouette sent Villapando a picture of "herself" that had been obtained from a Google image search. When days went by without hearing from Villapando, Caouette reinitiated the conversation on several occasions. The two continued chatting into October and then November. Finally—a full six months after the initial ad—it was December, and Caouette was ready for the sting.
On December 22, Caouette rather transparently reminded Villapando that the "girl" in question was only 13, then made him spell out explicitly what he had in mind.
Caouette: was it a hand job for $100 or what did we negotiate i forgot. remember im only 13 so u will have to pick me up is that cool, give me ur number and ill text u later, k,, anytime after 3 is cool. jess.
Villapando: ―No that wasn't it... Shoot me a text…
Caouette: ―first tell me what u want so i know what im in for ahhaha,,, i wanta make sure ill do it, u know :)
Villapando: ―S e x ! :)
With that, the cops were ready to make an arrest. Caouette handed the conversation off to another detective, who finalized the meeting point at Carl's Jr. "Ok... Hey ur not a cop r u? lol kind of scared," Villapando wrote. "Nope," came the reply. (The idea that undercover police must disclose their identities when asked directly is a long-running—and incorrect—idea.)
At 5:06pm, Villapando arrived at the restaurant, but he apparently had second thoughts and drove out of the parking lot. He was arrested anyway on a nearby street—with $110 in his wallet.
The cops had arrested the right guy, but judges again had questions about the methods used. Villapando claimed that he had no intention of having sex with a 13-year-old, saying that there was "no way" a young girl would hang out looking for sex on an adult website like Craigslist. He "just wanted to find out who the person was [he] was talking to," he said later. As for the cash, it was "poker money."
This may or may not have been true, but Caouette and company had made the case more difficult by their tactics. For instance, Caouette maintained a MySpace profile for "Jess," his 13-year-old alter ego. Villapando found the profile after searching for Jess' e-mail address, and at some point before the arrest, that profile was switched to say that Jess was 17 rather than 13. (The exact date that this switch occurred was a matter of debate.) Jess' profile picture also "appeared to be more sexually developed than the young woman in the photograph Caouette had sent to Villapando," noted a California appellate court.
Additionally, Caouette's long correspondence with Villapando included multiple sexual suggestions that may have gone beyond simply providing the "opportunity" for crime. And the initial advertisement had not offered illegal activity at all or even suggested that a child was behind it. Even its language, including use of the acronym "w4m" (woman looking for a man), showed that "the poster was at least somewhat experienced in the world of 'casual encounters' on Craigslist," said the court, giving credence to Villapando's claim that he never believed a 13-year-old to be involved.
In June 2013, a California appellate court threw out Villapando's conviction and ordered a new trial, just as it had in the Aguirre case.
"In the course of seeking consensual sex with a woman in an adult forum, Villapando was arguably induced by the police to pursue the fictional 13-year-old Jess, as they appealed to Villapando's sexual fantasies and urged him to continue the exchange of communications and meet for sex," wrote the court. "The police officers involved in this investigation, therefore, arguably engaged in entrapment."
These sorts of rulings, which are also seen in Florida (see Morgan v. Florida, for instance), do not say that the police did entrap the defendant—only that the entrapment argument has merit and must be made to and decided by a jury. But other judges have gone further.
Badgering, cajoling, and importuning
In June 2013, a Florida circuit court judge ruled that recent Indian immigrant Sivasankar Jothilingam "was entrapped as a matter of law" after responding to a Craigslist ad that had been created by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE).
The judge disliked the fact that the state had no previous evidence or even suspicion that Jothilingam was a predator, which smacked of random virtue testing. The advertisement itself had not mentioned illegal activity, and the agent behind the ad did not immediately mention a "14-year-old daughter." Jothilingam expressed hesitation when the 14-year-old was first mentioned; he "required guidance" from the FDLE agent before moving ahead.
Thus, the state had induced a crime for which the defendant showed no predisposition, ruled the judge. And because the judge called it a matter of law rather than a matter of facts—which a jury must weigh—he threw out Jothilingam's conviction.
Gennette hoped his case would end the same way, but his Florida trial judge refused to dismiss the case on grounds of entrapment. Once that decision was made, Gennette weighed his options; he knew that a trial could well go against him and lead to a tough prison sentence. To avoid that possibility, Gennette finally pled no contest to several lesser charges and stayed out of jail. But, still convinced of his innocence, he appealed his case on grounds that the motion to dismiss had been wrongly refused.
On September 13, 2013, a Florida appellate court ruled in favor of Gennette. In a scathing indictment of the state's actions, two appellate judges laid the blame on the Operation Blue Shepherd "chatter" (the third judge dissented, arguing that no entrapment had occurred). They wrote:
Throughout the e-mail chain, it was the agent who took the lead. It was the law enforcement agent who initially suggested the presence of a minor, though without any specific proposition of sexual or other criminal involvement between Appellant and the minor.
When Appellant's communications wandered to innocuous matters, it was the agent who repeatedly steered the conversation back to sexual activity with a minor.
The agent redirected Appellant's lack of focus on the minor by introducing and promoting the idea of participation by the minor in sexual activity with Appellant.
It was the agent who coaxed and cajoled Appellant for more details and challenged Appellant's reluctance by impugning his nerve and suggesting he was "scared."
The agent's persistent urging to overcome Appellant's obvious reluctance to commit or even describe illegal activity in his e-mail messages easily fits the statutory definition of entrapment…
Appellant's eventual sexually suggestive communications pertaining to the minor occurred only after the agent "cast her 'fishing expedition' to bait, hook, net, and land him for" the offenses charged.
The judges ruled, just as in the Jothilingam case, that there were no issues of fact for a jury to decide here; this was simply a matter of law, and "the law does not tolerate government action to provoke a law-abiding citizen to commit a crime in order to prosecute him or her with that crime," they wrote. "After placing a legal ad for an adult encounter, the government induced Mr. Gennette, an otherwise law-abiding citizen, by tactics of badgering, cajoling, importuning, and other affirmative acts to induce an agreement towards commission of a crime."
They threw out Gennette's conviction and his sentence.
After two years of dealing with the case, Gennette found himself overwhelmed by emotion. "The first thing I did was call my mother and told her of the news," he told me this month by e-mail, "then everybody else whom I was close to. (I am even shedding tears as I write this). Finally, the truth was out, but there was no celebrating this victory. Honestly, I was mad—mad at those who had created this unnecessary mess in the first place."
This anger—justified or not—is palpable in those who believe their lives and families are being upended to no purpose. One woman, writing on Gennette's "Florida Action" site, described how her ex-military son-in-law was caught in a Craigslist sting and had spent the previous 45 days in prison because the family could not afford bail.
It was an adult listing, who would even expect or suspect any 14yo to have an ad in the adult personals on craigslist??? He responded to what he assumed was an adult (& actually was very much an adult). Heck, he even stopped communication with the 'sting' (realizing he didn't want to cheat on my daughter)...'THEY' came back at him! He looked at it (the communication) as more of a 'game'...then 'THEY' manipulated and lured him into 'meeting'...he again tried to back out...but they swarmed him. Plus the picture they sent him looked to be someone over 18. 'THEY' did the manipulating...
He is NOT guilty! True, he was not using his brain...he made a mistake to even consider cheating (and for that he is so very remorseful)... but he most certainly was NOT looking for any type of encounter with children.
In contrast, the police tend to see the stings as important actions against child predators, and they routinely highlight the unsavory nature of many of the men who show up at target houses.
"A lot of times they will tell us what they've done in the past, and that's when it gets even more frightening, because now you're talking about an individual that not only wants to hurt a child but someone who is admitting to have hurt a child or bragging about hurting a child," Brevard Country Sheriff Wayne Ivey told local media after a recent sting.
How does the whole situation look to an outsider? Eric Goldman, a prominent Internet law professor at Santa Clara University, has read dozens of these Craigslist sting cases and sympathizes somewhat with those in Gennette's situation.
"I've been shocked by how far undercover police officers are going to persuade men to consider engaging in underage sex," he told me. "It's clear that many of these men aren't looking for underage sex and aren't really interested in it, and I cannot believe the time and effort—dozens of e-mails over the course of many days and weeks—undercover cops are investing to get the men to acknowledge even a slight interest in underage sex."
Though he approves of well-run operations that target predators online, Goldman is convinced that current stings too often snare "unsophisticated men" who "aren't predators and who would not initiate underage sex, but their belief systems aren't so rigid that they would turn down aggressive offers of sex from underage users who pretended to be adults. Many of us can't relate because we are not interested in underage sex even if offered to us, but we often come from different socio-economic backgrounds than the men in question."
Despite the wishes of people like Gennette, ICAC task forces aren't about to stop running these kinds of online stings—which in most cases are upheld by judges. As one federal judge put it in a July 23, 2013 ruling in another Craigslist case, United States v. Cruz, "Courts have long countenanced law enforcement practices similar to those defendant challenges here."
But the new level of judicial scrutiny on Craigslist stings may force everyone involved to pay much closer attention to the fine line between a proper sting and entrapment. "Based on the feedback coming from the courts," Goldman said, "I expect law enforcement will make adjustments and be less aggressive about trying to initiate illegal interactions."
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Everyone thinks they've been "entrapped" by police, but some men actually are.
by Nate Anderson - ars technica
http://i.imgur.com/ygG9sIM.jpg
n 2011, 43-year-old Army veteran Edwin "Trey" Gennette lived just outside Pensacola, Florida, with a pet possum and a talking Ford Mustang. One warm June evening, he began poking around the "Casual Encounters" section of Craigslist, where he found an ad promising a novel erotic situation. "2 sisters seeking a man that handle both [of] us," it said. "We are ready for a hot night, are you?"
He was. But when he e-mailed the address in the ad, Gennette received a quick response from a woman named Amber, making clear that only one of the sisters was 19. "My lil sis is in town visiting me for the summer," wrote Amber. "She is 14, you ok with that?"
"Well I think she is a bit young, lol but depends on what you have in mind," Gennette wrote back. He sent Amber a photo of himself with his pet possum. Amber sent back a photo showing two young women on a boat. Gennette and Amber chatted for a while over e-mail, sharing weekend plans. Gennette suggested the sisters come over to see the possum, which was recovering from veterinary surgery to her "female parts." He offered to give the two girls a ride in his Mustang.
But the older sister made clear that "we host only," and she kept pushing Gennette for details of what exactly he might want to do with younger sister Erin.
Gennette: hmmm, maybe you can twist my arm, lol I have some things I need to do tomorrow am, and since you cant come here......but I can be pursuaded, lol
Amber: pursuaded???? how do u want us to do that? so what do u want to do with us
Gennette: well im sure you could figure something out on how to pursuade me, im up for anything dear
Amber: we like a man that will tell us want he wants to do, not us doing all the work
Gennette: oh I wouldn't let you do all the work, duh, lol but while driving my car, i d have to focus on the road for sure, when do you want to get together?
Amber: do u realize that its me and my lil sis
Gennette appeared reticent about actually following through, talking about needing "persuasion" and wanting to "keep things clean so to speak, lol" when it came to the little sister. But Amber continued to press, asking:
Amber: what r u going to do to us
Gennette: things that are pleasurable, believe me, lol
Amber: like what???? we like details? and love to hear, plus i need to prep her. u have to make sure you are gentle with her and dont hurt her
Gennette: prep her? what does that consist of? lol I have to show the details but they will be satisfactory, promise … now I have one cute underage sister and another young cute of age sister, is this all consensual? im assuming yes, but I am still curious what you mean by prepping her
Amber: u r right. one underage sis, and one of age sis. everything is consensual. we r getting horny, u? we like to hear it, let us know what u r going to do to us
Despite the obvious warning signs, Gennette continued the conversation and appeared to come around to the idea of sexual activity with Erin—but the exact nature of this activity remained vague. Gennette told Amber that he would show her special attention "with my tongue," and Amber pressed yet again for information about "lil sis. she thinks u r leaving her out. :(" Gennette told Amber not to worry because "nobody gets left out."
http://i.imgur.com/E8FEoXp.png
The photo of "two sisters" sent to Gennette by investigators.
Two nights after responding to Amber's ad, Gennette agreed to meet the sisters at their home. But he refused to promise anything more explicit than "a lot of smiles," so Amber herself got more explicit—and also suggested that Gennette was a coward.
"my lil sis just said that she does not want u to come over until she knows what u want to do with her," Amber wrote. "i have to agree with her, bc i need to make sure she does not get hurt. we really want this to go down, but it just seems like u r scared. we r so ready for u. u would have to bring rubbers for her, bc i cant have my 14yo baby sis pregers."
At 6pm, Gennette responded, "I will bring those," and he promised to be "easy and gentle and you can help me." He also noted that the whole situation was "almost hard to believe."
http://i.imgur.com/hxTGbqw.jpg
Gennette's mugshot.
Amber then agreed that he could come over and provided an address, so Gennette hopped into his gray Mustang to make the 30-minute drive. When he arrived, he walked up to the house and knocked. Burly policemen in bulletproof vests burst out of the door, dragged Gennette back inside the house, and forced him to the ground. When he arose, he was in handcuffs—and charged as a sex offender. There had been no Amber and no Erin.
Held on a $300,000 bond, Gennette spent three weeks in jail before he came up with the bond. While there, his name appeared repeatedly in local accounts about the police sting—dubbed Operation Blue Shepherd—that had caught him and 24 others. According to a news account at the time, "An officer said most of the suspects admitted they were coming inside for sex. One said he was actually coming to chastise the parents. Another said he was coming to play Dungeons and Dragons." Police released surveillance video of the arrests to the media.
"We obviously feel the operation was very successful," Pensacola Police Chief Chip Simmons told the media. "That's bittersweet, though. It's successful that we got 25 people off the street, but I'm also disappointed there were 25 people willing to do this type of an act."
Mugshot aggregation websites, which typically charge a fee to remove the image, quickly posted Gennette's photo. "Have fun in prison, punk. Do you know what they do to diddlers in prison?" one commenter wrote beneath the picture. Another added, "Prison is too good for this scum, cut off his balls and feed him to the gators."
When Gennette posted bond, he returned home to find it had been searched by police looking for additional evidence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2siqp0xoEuY
Operation Blue Shepherd takedowns.
"As soon as the word was out and the media reported the story, my life was destroyed," Gennette told me this month, describing those early days. "To say I struggled, and still am, is an understatement, and I found myself practically homeless a few times." Several Florida men charged in similar online stings have killed themselves after their arrests, but Gennette said that he found support from family and friends who "were completely supportive once I explained to them the truth."
That truth, as he saw it, was that his life had been thrown off course due to police injustice. He had been on an adult website where people were known to indulge in all sorts of lies about their ages and situations. "How is it that just because law enforcement tells you they are a certain age that you have to believe them, especially if the photograph they send you clearly is that of a more mature woman well into their 20s?" he responded when I asked him why he didn't stop talking when a 14-year-old was introduced into the situation.
"I never truly believed that what they told me was true, and I was confused to why the undercover officer kept on pushing and pushing and constantly harassing me into trying to get me to say something! Law enforcement were the ones who were soliciting me to commit a crime that was determined I was not predisposed to commit."
(This common "it was all just a fantasy, and I thought she was an adult" defense has been tried by many caught in online stings, including former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, a major public player in the run-up to the Iraq War. It generally fails. In 2009, Ritter was caught masturbating on a webcam for a "15-year-old girl" who turned out to be a small town cop. He was sentenced to prison time in Pennsylvania in 2012.)
Unlike many of those arrested in such stings, Gennette decided to fight back. He launched an activist project called "Florida Scandal" that collected stories from those caught in similar situations and offered to help them.
For his own case, Gennette was assigned a public defender who helped him argue that police had entrapped him. The government had been the one to press the idea of a 14-year-old sister, his lawyer argued, saying that Gennette had shown no sexual intent toward the fictitious "Erin." For instance, Gennette had repeatedly used the terms "you" and "you'll" in reference to Amber without "stating a commonly used southern phrase to include the sister by stating 'y'all' or 'you all' or 'you girls.'" Even the government agent playing "Amber" appeared to recognize the issue, repeatedly bringing Gennette's conversation back to Erin.
What about the end of the conversation, the part in which Gennette finally and explicitly agreed to bring "rubbers" to help "Erin" from getting "preggers"? This was only "vague sexual innuendo towards the sister," said Gennette's lawyer, and it had come only after "Amber had implored [Gennette] to say he would do something with her sister a total of 15 times over the course of approximately 36 hours."
While entrapment might sound like a long-shot argument, the kind of thing every scumbag predator would say after being caught in a sting, it's an argument increasingly being made to state and federal courts across the country as these sorts of online stings multiply. Judges are taking it seriously—and some defendants are winning their cases.
Stung
http://i.imgur.com/Qdolrho.jpg
Gennette's situation isn't unique; Florida cops run an amazing number of these online, child sex stings on sites like Craigslist. Here's a partial list of such operations from the first seven months of 2013:
Operation Nightlight, January 2013: Three men arrested in Gainesville
Operation Cardea, January 2013: 50 arrested by 200 investigators in Seminole County
Operation Intercept II, February 2013: 30 arrested in Sarasota County
Operation No Soliciting, March 2013: 15 arrested in St. John's County
Operation Green Shepherd II, March 2013: 35 arrested in Manatee County
Operation April Fools, April 2013: 20 arrested in Tallahassee
Operation Pegasus, June 2013: Seven arrested in Gainesville; local police blame the city's newspaper for keeping numbers down by publishing news of the initial arrests
Unnamed "travelers' operation," June 2013: 41 suspects (including one woman) arrested by Polk County officers (see all of their mugshots and charges)
Operation Sand Spider, July 2013: 11 arrested in Brevard County; one man was a registered sex offender who allegedly brought a 17-year-old male with him to the home
The operations are coordinated by the state's Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces. ICAC task forces operate across the country under the auspices of the Department of Justice, and they bring together local cops, state lawyers, and federal agents to "develop an effective response to child pornography cases and the sexual assault and abuse of children facilitated by technology." They also provide significant grant money and training opportunities to investigators.
ICAC task forces oversee other types of operations, but one of their signatures is the one-week "online advertisement" sting of the kind that caught Gennette. Thanks to a formerly confidential planning document released after a September 2012 sting dubbed "Operation Green Shepherd," the scale and operation of these stings has become clear. Most operations begin with the rental of a home in the target community, a home that will become the base of operations for 30 or more people during the week that the operation runs. Security is paramount; no police uniforms or cars are allowed in the vicinity of the house, and personnel are transported to work from an off-site location. They must remain at the home from 1:30pm until at least 2:00am each day.
Why does it take 30 people to arrest solo strangers knocking on the front door? It's a labor-intensive operation, involving drumming up suspects, performing "open source intelligence," installing hidden cameras, filling out police paperwork, cuffing suspects, dealing with suspects' vehicles, and executing search warrants on suspects' homes after arrest. Each operation requires:
House commander
House supervisor
Chat supervisor
Analysts
Case agents
Chatters
Vehicle team
Investigative support team
Arrest team
Surveillance team
Prisoner transport/takedown team
Audio-visual and IT support
Forensic support
A "house scribe" to handle documentation
The week begins with ICAC-trained chatters who post ads online and then engage those who reply. The attention is lavished on Internet sites like Craigslist and Backpage.com because online classified ads have become a go-to location for men seeking sex. An August 2013 study (PDF) from the Arizona State University School of Social Work examined the 15 largest cities in the US and generated estimates for how many men sought sex from these online classified ads. "On average, within the fifteen markets explored, one out of every 20 males over the age of 18 in a metropolitan city area was soliciting online sex ads," the study found. "The findings ranged from approximately one out of every five males (Houston, 21.4 percent) to less than one out of 166 males (San Francisco, 0.6 percent)."
The chatters work on laptops at desks and kitchen tables, relying on services like the law enforcement-only tool Callyo if suspects demand a phone call. (One of Callyo's "covert" products is "recorded UC [undercover] phone lines.")
As they interact with suspects throughout the week, the chatters use a Web-based "deconfliction tool" to make sure that multiple chatters aren't going after the same target. According to a grant application from the Department of Justice, which funds the tool, the system lets any law enforcement officer look up a target's name, nickname, e-mail address, phone number, IP address, or physical address—then see immediately if any other agent or agency is also engaged with the same subject.
Deconfliction has grown in importance over the last few years; so many agencies now run stings that the chances of a suspect talking to several different police agencies at once are non-trivial. In 2011, Charles Sumner responded to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) post on Craigslist which advertised "Young one ready for the experience, W4M." Sumner said he would provide the fake 14-year-old child a "slow, loving, kind experience," but he wasn't invited to the undercover home; instead, he was taken off the FDLE officer's target list after a deconfliction tool showed that he was already talking with another Florida cop from Tallahassee, who was also posing as a 14-year-old girl on Craigslist. Sumner was eventually invited to the undercover home by this second officer.
While chatters talk to people like Sumner, analysts attempt to identify targets by name using clues in their communications. To do this, they have a huge variety of tools, starting with the obvious: open source intelligence. With a partial name, username, or e-mail address, search engines can make it simple to find more complete information. Analysts can also query law enforcement and state databases, such as Florida's Driver and Vehicle Information Database, FDLE records, and police case management systems. By the time someone like Sumner walks up to the door, the police should know plenty about him and may have already prepped evidence preservation letters and subpoenas for his online data.
Suspects who provide explicit statements of sexual interest in an underage child are eventually provided the address of the target home. Once invited to the house, the suspect will be arrested no matter what he does. Generally, the arrest team waits for a knock on the door, then takes down the suspect and handcuffs him. But even if the suspect has second thoughts and just drives on past the house, the police are watching; a surveillance team follows him out of the area and stops the vehicle.
In either case, the vehicle team "renders the car clear of other occupants" and takes the suspect's car into the garage for a search. Search of Sumner's vehicle, for instance, revealed a box of condoms, five types of lube, sex toys, a vibrator, and spare batteries.
Back inside the house, each suspect is taken to an interview room with a case detective who reads each man his rights and asks for consent to search the suspect's home to seize computers and cell phones. If consent is not forthcoming, a local judge is on standby throughout the week to sign off on search warrants. In either case, the investigative support team drives out to each man's home and seizes his computer equipment. Sumner's home computer and cell phone revealed "85 images of young-looking females in sexually suggestive poses or predicaments."
The suspect is then turned over to the transport team and taken to prison—and everyone gets into position for the next suspect's arrival.
What's most amazing about these stings is that they work at all. Police publicize their operations widely; Manatee County even releases video of the arrests to its YouTube page. (You can watch the Operation Green Shepherd team in action below.) Even the cops can't believe the technique keeps working. "Despite the fact our detectives have conducted nine of these operations since 2006; despite the extensive media coverage when we talk about the numerous arrests; despite the fact we make no secret about putting suspects in jail—there are those who continue to travel to Polk County to have sex with a child," Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said after a sting operation concluded in 2013.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EtXJMsrxb1o
Inside the Operation Green Shepherd target house.
Weeks or months later, as the cases grind through the court system, the suspects who don't plead guilty usually claim entrapment—as Sumner did. Many of these claims fail, especially when the suspects respond to an ad that clearly suggests an underage sexual encounter.
And the basic right of the police to use sex as a hook has long been upheld by the courts. As the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals put it in a key ruling from 1987, "Many people in our society may find the deceptive use of sex in law enforcement to be morally offensive. Nonetheless, 'in order to apprehend those engaged in serious crime, government agents may lawfully use methods that are neither appealing nor moral if judged by abstract norms of decency.'" Thus, it was not surprising that in 2013, a federal appeals court disagreed that Sumner had been entrapped; his 10-year sentence was upheld.
Gennette went through the same process, but he never abandoned his conviction that he had been entrapped by the police. To understand why, we need to take a look at entrapment—and how it applies to these increasingly common proactive stings.
Entrapment
Entrapment is a legal argument under which a suspect's guilt doesn't matter.
When 53-year-old California man Gregory Aguirre showed up at a Carl's Jr. burger joint near Huntington Beach in 2010 after saying he would pay $100 for sex to a "13-year-old" he had met on Craigslist, his entrapment defense didn't depend on arguing that he had really expected to meet an adult who had simply been role-playing. (Though Aguirre did also claim this.) As the California appellate judge overseeing his case put it in 2012, "Entrapment is about the actions of the police, not the guilt of the defendant."
http://i.imgur.com/RSVsfr1.jpg
Gregory Aguirre
In that case, the government argued that most people would have—and that Aguirre should have—walked away from the whole situation after hearing that the "girl" involved was 13. But that argument is all about the defendant's actions and provides no room for discussing police conduct. The judge called it "circuitous" and said it "leaves no situation where the defendant can assert entrapment as a defense."
In most jurisdictions, the relevant legal standard for entrapment involves two key questions. First, was the defendant "induced" by police to commit a crime? Police are allowed to provide mere opportunities for crime, but their cases get weaker the more pressure they bring to bear.
"Our analysis suggests the government should not be in the business of testing the will of law-abiding citizens with elaborate (if improbable) fantasies of sensuous teenagers desperate to engage in sexual acts with random middle-aged men," wrote the judge handling Aguirre's appeal.
But the key here is "law-abiding citizens." If the government can show that the suspect had a "predisposition" toward the particular crime at issue—the second key question—the entrapment argument swings in favor of the police. Thus, in the Sumner case, his many photographs of children and the ease with which he consented to the encounter convinced a judge that Sumner had a predisposition.
Aguirre had no previous criminal record, though, and he did not actually meet up with the "girl" until eight days after the initial Craigslist post. He was browsing adult-oriented forums when he found the ad, and his "manhood" was repeatedly denigrated by the officer ("I think u all talk mr MAN")—a form of pressure. A psychologist who evaluated Aguirre found him to have no unusual sexual interest in children.
The judge in Aguirre's case wrote that he did not mean "to endorse the practice of pursuing casual sex on a Craigslist forum," and he concluded that the defendant was "gullible" for believing the whole lurid tale. But he agreed that a reasonable jury might have found entrapment here; Aguirre's case was sent back for a new trial, one in which the jury would get the chance to make a finding of entrapment.
The officer who had posted the ad which snagged Aguirre was Detective Alan Caouette of the Huntington Beach Police Department. Caouette specializes in prostitution, pimping, and pandering cases and has been involved in numerous Craigslist stings in California.
http://i.imgur.com/jM9g1Ui.jpg
Venson Villapando
Caouette could expend significant effort on these cases. One of his Craigslist ads, which had the heading "looking to get by in hard time," attracted 100 respondents back in 2009. One of them was 25-year-old Venson Villapando, who wrote back on July 9, "hey I want to have fun… what do you have in mind… anything is possible." Caouette responded that "she" was 13—and that Villapando would have to pay $100. He quickly agreed, but no meeting was actually scheduled. (Villapando was also lying about his own age, saying that he was 21.)
Instead, the correspondence dragged on. Messages were exchanged on July 10, 11, 14, and 25. August arrived, and the two wrote each other multiple times throughout the month; still, nothing happened. The pair talked throughout September, and Caouette sent Villapando a picture of "herself" that had been obtained from a Google image search. When days went by without hearing from Villapando, Caouette reinitiated the conversation on several occasions. The two continued chatting into October and then November. Finally—a full six months after the initial ad—it was December, and Caouette was ready for the sting.
On December 22, Caouette rather transparently reminded Villapando that the "girl" in question was only 13, then made him spell out explicitly what he had in mind.
Caouette: was it a hand job for $100 or what did we negotiate i forgot. remember im only 13 so u will have to pick me up is that cool, give me ur number and ill text u later, k,, anytime after 3 is cool. jess.
Villapando: ―No that wasn't it... Shoot me a text…
Caouette: ―first tell me what u want so i know what im in for ahhaha,,, i wanta make sure ill do it, u know :)
Villapando: ―S e x ! :)
With that, the cops were ready to make an arrest. Caouette handed the conversation off to another detective, who finalized the meeting point at Carl's Jr. "Ok... Hey ur not a cop r u? lol kind of scared," Villapando wrote. "Nope," came the reply. (The idea that undercover police must disclose their identities when asked directly is a long-running—and incorrect—idea.)
At 5:06pm, Villapando arrived at the restaurant, but he apparently had second thoughts and drove out of the parking lot. He was arrested anyway on a nearby street—with $110 in his wallet.
The cops had arrested the right guy, but judges again had questions about the methods used. Villapando claimed that he had no intention of having sex with a 13-year-old, saying that there was "no way" a young girl would hang out looking for sex on an adult website like Craigslist. He "just wanted to find out who the person was [he] was talking to," he said later. As for the cash, it was "poker money."
This may or may not have been true, but Caouette and company had made the case more difficult by their tactics. For instance, Caouette maintained a MySpace profile for "Jess," his 13-year-old alter ego. Villapando found the profile after searching for Jess' e-mail address, and at some point before the arrest, that profile was switched to say that Jess was 17 rather than 13. (The exact date that this switch occurred was a matter of debate.) Jess' profile picture also "appeared to be more sexually developed than the young woman in the photograph Caouette had sent to Villapando," noted a California appellate court.
Additionally, Caouette's long correspondence with Villapando included multiple sexual suggestions that may have gone beyond simply providing the "opportunity" for crime. And the initial advertisement had not offered illegal activity at all or even suggested that a child was behind it. Even its language, including use of the acronym "w4m" (woman looking for a man), showed that "the poster was at least somewhat experienced in the world of 'casual encounters' on Craigslist," said the court, giving credence to Villapando's claim that he never believed a 13-year-old to be involved.
In June 2013, a California appellate court threw out Villapando's conviction and ordered a new trial, just as it had in the Aguirre case.
"In the course of seeking consensual sex with a woman in an adult forum, Villapando was arguably induced by the police to pursue the fictional 13-year-old Jess, as they appealed to Villapando's sexual fantasies and urged him to continue the exchange of communications and meet for sex," wrote the court. "The police officers involved in this investigation, therefore, arguably engaged in entrapment."
These sorts of rulings, which are also seen in Florida (see Morgan v. Florida, for instance), do not say that the police did entrap the defendant—only that the entrapment argument has merit and must be made to and decided by a jury. But other judges have gone further.
Badgering, cajoling, and importuning
In June 2013, a Florida circuit court judge ruled that recent Indian immigrant Sivasankar Jothilingam "was entrapped as a matter of law" after responding to a Craigslist ad that had been created by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE).
The judge disliked the fact that the state had no previous evidence or even suspicion that Jothilingam was a predator, which smacked of random virtue testing. The advertisement itself had not mentioned illegal activity, and the agent behind the ad did not immediately mention a "14-year-old daughter." Jothilingam expressed hesitation when the 14-year-old was first mentioned; he "required guidance" from the FDLE agent before moving ahead.
Thus, the state had induced a crime for which the defendant showed no predisposition, ruled the judge. And because the judge called it a matter of law rather than a matter of facts—which a jury must weigh—he threw out Jothilingam's conviction.
Gennette hoped his case would end the same way, but his Florida trial judge refused to dismiss the case on grounds of entrapment. Once that decision was made, Gennette weighed his options; he knew that a trial could well go against him and lead to a tough prison sentence. To avoid that possibility, Gennette finally pled no contest to several lesser charges and stayed out of jail. But, still convinced of his innocence, he appealed his case on grounds that the motion to dismiss had been wrongly refused.
On September 13, 2013, a Florida appellate court ruled in favor of Gennette. In a scathing indictment of the state's actions, two appellate judges laid the blame on the Operation Blue Shepherd "chatter" (the third judge dissented, arguing that no entrapment had occurred). They wrote:
Throughout the e-mail chain, it was the agent who took the lead. It was the law enforcement agent who initially suggested the presence of a minor, though without any specific proposition of sexual or other criminal involvement between Appellant and the minor.
When Appellant's communications wandered to innocuous matters, it was the agent who repeatedly steered the conversation back to sexual activity with a minor.
The agent redirected Appellant's lack of focus on the minor by introducing and promoting the idea of participation by the minor in sexual activity with Appellant.
It was the agent who coaxed and cajoled Appellant for more details and challenged Appellant's reluctance by impugning his nerve and suggesting he was "scared."
The agent's persistent urging to overcome Appellant's obvious reluctance to commit or even describe illegal activity in his e-mail messages easily fits the statutory definition of entrapment…
Appellant's eventual sexually suggestive communications pertaining to the minor occurred only after the agent "cast her 'fishing expedition' to bait, hook, net, and land him for" the offenses charged.
The judges ruled, just as in the Jothilingam case, that there were no issues of fact for a jury to decide here; this was simply a matter of law, and "the law does not tolerate government action to provoke a law-abiding citizen to commit a crime in order to prosecute him or her with that crime," they wrote. "After placing a legal ad for an adult encounter, the government induced Mr. Gennette, an otherwise law-abiding citizen, by tactics of badgering, cajoling, importuning, and other affirmative acts to induce an agreement towards commission of a crime."
They threw out Gennette's conviction and his sentence.
After two years of dealing with the case, Gennette found himself overwhelmed by emotion. "The first thing I did was call my mother and told her of the news," he told me this month by e-mail, "then everybody else whom I was close to. (I am even shedding tears as I write this). Finally, the truth was out, but there was no celebrating this victory. Honestly, I was mad—mad at those who had created this unnecessary mess in the first place."
This anger—justified or not—is palpable in those who believe their lives and families are being upended to no purpose. One woman, writing on Gennette's "Florida Action" site, described how her ex-military son-in-law was caught in a Craigslist sting and had spent the previous 45 days in prison because the family could not afford bail.
It was an adult listing, who would even expect or suspect any 14yo to have an ad in the adult personals on craigslist??? He responded to what he assumed was an adult (& actually was very much an adult). Heck, he even stopped communication with the 'sting' (realizing he didn't want to cheat on my daughter)...'THEY' came back at him! He looked at it (the communication) as more of a 'game'...then 'THEY' manipulated and lured him into 'meeting'...he again tried to back out...but they swarmed him. Plus the picture they sent him looked to be someone over 18. 'THEY' did the manipulating...
He is NOT guilty! True, he was not using his brain...he made a mistake to even consider cheating (and for that he is so very remorseful)... but he most certainly was NOT looking for any type of encounter with children.
In contrast, the police tend to see the stings as important actions against child predators, and they routinely highlight the unsavory nature of many of the men who show up at target houses.
"A lot of times they will tell us what they've done in the past, and that's when it gets even more frightening, because now you're talking about an individual that not only wants to hurt a child but someone who is admitting to have hurt a child or bragging about hurting a child," Brevard Country Sheriff Wayne Ivey told local media after a recent sting.
How does the whole situation look to an outsider? Eric Goldman, a prominent Internet law professor at Santa Clara University, has read dozens of these Craigslist sting cases and sympathizes somewhat with those in Gennette's situation.
"I've been shocked by how far undercover police officers are going to persuade men to consider engaging in underage sex," he told me. "It's clear that many of these men aren't looking for underage sex and aren't really interested in it, and I cannot believe the time and effort—dozens of e-mails over the course of many days and weeks—undercover cops are investing to get the men to acknowledge even a slight interest in underage sex."
Though he approves of well-run operations that target predators online, Goldman is convinced that current stings too often snare "unsophisticated men" who "aren't predators and who would not initiate underage sex, but their belief systems aren't so rigid that they would turn down aggressive offers of sex from underage users who pretended to be adults. Many of us can't relate because we are not interested in underage sex even if offered to us, but we often come from different socio-economic backgrounds than the men in question."
Despite the wishes of people like Gennette, ICAC task forces aren't about to stop running these kinds of online stings—which in most cases are upheld by judges. As one federal judge put it in a July 23, 2013 ruling in another Craigslist case, United States v. Cruz, "Courts have long countenanced law enforcement practices similar to those defendant challenges here."
But the new level of judicial scrutiny on Craigslist stings may force everyone involved to pay much closer attention to the fine line between a proper sting and entrapment. "Based on the feedback coming from the courts," Goldman said, "I expect law enforcement will make adjustments and be less aggressive about trying to initiate illegal interactions."