The first article’s headline ran,
“Sting nets 35 arrests.” It appears the
Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office, along with the Clearwater Police Department
and numerous other local, state, and federal agencies, set up online profiles
as girls and boys ages 13-15 on backpage.com, Craigslist, and AOL chat
rooms. On one end of this sting were law
enforcement officers. On the other end
were 35 people who thought they were chatting with minors. When the two sides agreed to meet, law
enforcement was waiting to arrest the alleged predator at the meeting site.
Now, for those of us who think
child predation is a scourge, this might seem like a righteous cause. However, according to the news report the
charges against these 35 detainees included, “seduction of a child using the Internet,” “traveling to meet
a minor,” “lewd and lascivious battery,” and “sexual battery.” Does anyone but me see the conflict here?
Does driving to meet a police
officer meet any of these charges? Does
chatting online about your darkest thoughts regarding children meet any of
these charges? Was any child seduced in
these conversations? I am not a lawyer,
but I cannot imagine these charges can hold up in a court of law if the Times article is accurate.
Predation needs to be
stopped. But, law enforcement needs to
do a better job than this lame effort. Surely there
are other ways to catch predators? If
the police find an active case, they should be able to easily get a court order to tap into the child’s or website's computer
chat room. If law enforcement has a
predator under profile, they should apply for a subpoena for that person’s computer records. What these agencies have done with this sting is entrapment,
pure and simple. No matter the type of alleged crime, we are a better nation
than this!
The second Tampa Bay Times article that caught my eye this morning was entitled, “Price of
an ‘evil act’ is prison.” In this case Federal
Court Judge Richard Lazzara sentenced 29-year-old Andrew Welden to 13 years and
8 months in prison on the charges of product tampering and conspiracy to commit
mail fraud.
The act that drew these charges was
giving his girlfriend one dose of a pill that causes miscarriages. He did this without her
knowledge. His girlfriend was less than
7 weeks’ pregnant at the time. Although
arguments in court by experts suggested no one really knew whether the pill
caused the miscarriage, the judge decided it did. That decision is fine with me. That is the job of judges, to decide what testimony
is relevant and believable.
What I have a problem with, if this article is written correctly, is the judge calling young Mr. Welden’s act
“evil.” He uses this thinking to
justify a draconian sentence to prison. Welden did nothing that harmed this woman
physically. A less than 7 week-old fetus
is not a human; and, therefore, cannot be murdered. And, despite the fact his girlfriend gave the fetus a name and
repeated it over and over again in the sentencing hearing, there was not even manslaughter to be considered. There was nothing done to deserve this type
of sentence for the charges filed.
Based on the judge’s decision to
accept that the pill caused the miscarriage, I accept the man is guilty of
being stupid, guilty of lying to his girlfriend, and guilty of potentially jeopardizing
her health. He should have been charged with assault, a
charge I believe he would be found guilty if this had been a Florida court.
I believe by using the word
“evil,” a religious word that conjures images of Satan, it allowed the judge in his own mind to justify his stiff sentence for a stupid crime. I believe by using the images of abused
children, law enforcement officers justified the use of the internet to catch
men and women with “evil” intentions.
This is a nation of laws. “Evil” is not a crime under any statute
devised by Federal, State, or Local government.
Let us do a better job under the laws we have to protect us and leave "evil" for priests, preachers, rabbis, and mullahs to consider.
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