Fighting Internet [Child] Porn

War on web crime raises entrapment questions

War on Web crime raises entrapment questions

By Michael Hewlett
The News & Advance

Last November, a Roanoke man signed onto AOL Instant Messaging and began a sexual conversation in an adult chat room with an undercover agent posing as a 13-year-old Bedford County girl.

An hour later, Graham S. Olson, 24, drove about 40 miles to meet the girl at Boonsboro Elementary School.

Arriving at the school, Olson instead met investigators from Operation Blue Ridge Thunder, the Bedford County Internet Crime task force.

They charged Olson with attempted carnal knowledge and use of a communication system for promoting and procuring minors for sexual activity.

Olson pleaded no contest Tuesday to two lesser counts of attempting to contribute to the delinquency of a minor.

In court Tuesday, Olson's lawyer Sam Garrison argued that Olson had no intention to commit a crime and had believed the person he was talking to wasn't 13 years old. Olson told the girl he was 17.

"You couldn't account for all the individual fantasies as to why they misrepresent themselves ... but you can represent that the Internet is a masquerade party," Garrison said Tuesday.

Just because an undercover police officer joins the party doesn't mean there's entrapment, but it's a charge defense attorneys sometimes level at law enforcement agencies.

Defense attorneys say they rarely use entrapment as a defense and don't expect that to change with the Internet.

"The problem is that people believe that it's illegal to suggest the crime to the person," said Joseph Sanzone, a Lynchburg defense attorney. "It's not illegal to suggest a crime to catch people who are trying to engage in illegal activity. It's only illegal to do something to cause someone to involuntarily participate in a criminal act."

People unfamiliar with the law sometimes fail to make that distinction, he said.

"It's when the government creates the crime," Sanzone said. "It's not just an unwary person who gets caught in an apparent criminal enterprise."

"Entrapment is a defense that is rarely successful," said Lynchburg defense lawyer James Angel. "The dangerous part is when you have a drug case and you have an entrapment defense.

"I think it opens the barn door as far as making admissible evidence by the prosecution of the defendant's knowledge of drugs and drug dealings, evidence that would not have been admitted except for the entrapment defense being raised."

Richard Bonnie, a professor of criminal law at the University of Virginia, agreed. Entrapment usually comes up in cases of political corruption and other consensual crimes with some type of transaction.

Showing that a police investigative technique provided the occasion for the crime, or made it more likely, is not enough, he said.

"They have to prove the defendant wasn't predisposed to commit the crime," he said. "That's what makes the defense so hard. That would be the same whether the police behavior occurred over cyberspace or in physical reality."

Still, investigators take precautions.

"I caution them, 'Hey, watch your uploads, downloads and remember entrapment,' " said Bedford County Sheriff Michael Brown. "They get it from me all the time."

Training makes the difference, Bedford County Commonwealth's Attorney Randy Krantz said. Bedford prosecutors also review the evidence before they file charges.

"The key is the adequate training of police officers and (entrapment) was specifically addressed with Operation Blue Ridge Thunder," he said.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children offer training for Bedford prosecutors and investigators. The Bedford program received a federal grant to conduct its investigations and educate children.

"The reason we've been able to avoid the entrapment argument is the training," Krantz said. "They're trained not to introduce the idea of criminality. It would be improper for the police officers to suggest to someone they should have sex with a child and provide a decoy."

What happens on the Internet is no different from what happens in a drug case, Krantz said. An undercover cop creates the impression he has drugs, but it is up to people to actually ask for the drugs.

"It sounds like entrapment," Krantz said, but there is "a difference between being entrapped and being trapped, getting caught."

Lt. Robert Tavenner of the Virginia State Police's Economic Cybercrime Unit said the Internet hasn't had any impact on entrapment.

"I can't think of a single case we've lost because of the entrapment issue," he said about the three-year program.

Brown can think of only one time entrapment came up: the case of Tom Rice. Rice, an aide to former West Virginia Gov. Gaston Caperton, was sentenced to five years and three months in prison for crossing state lines to have sex with a 13-year-old boy he met in a chat room.

"A prime example of whether the entrapment defense was going to fly was the Tom Rice case," he said. "The bottom line is that entrapment didn't fly and Mr. Rice is serving a federal sentence."

This story can be found at : http://www.newsadvance.com/MGBEMNE7MEC.html