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The constitutionality of such a honeytrap is not exactly clear though since the person isn't trying to molest an actual child. It's a bit like leaving a fake gu

The constitutionality of such a honeytrap is not exactly clear though since the person isn't trying to molest an actual child. It's a bit like leaving a fake gun on the street and then prosecuting a person who picks it up and tries to shoot somebody for attempted murder. Are you still guilty of a crime if you only think you were going to commit a crime? If someone lies to you that they are allergic to peanuts and you secretly give them peanuts is that attempted murder? If you download a song that you weren't aware is in the public domain, is that attempted copyright infringement?

philwelch 7y ago
Attempting to murder someone is still attempted murder, even if it was impossible for the attempt to succeed. Let’s say you and I both want to kill Bob. I sneak into his bedroom at night and smother him to death with a pillow. Bob is now dead and I sneak away—I have committed murder. Shortly afterwards, you sneak into his bedroom and shoot him multiple times with a gun. In this scenario, you are guilty of attempted murder even though the intended victim was already dead, unbeknownst to you. Many stings rely on similar principles. People who steal bait cars don’t actually succeed in stealing the car, nor do johns who solicit streetwalking undercover cops succeed in buying sexual favors from them.
- megous 7y ago
  That's something different. Here you'd be charging someone based on what they thought during the act, and not on what they did or attempted to do.
  - RHSeeger 7y ago
    Not really. The murderer thought they were firing bullets into a live person. The sexual predator thought they were abusing a child. Both were incorrect about their target (dead body, grown adult). It seems to me to be a direct parallel.
    - philwelch 7y ago
      Though the better analogy might be: Bob knows that somebody is out to kill him and so he hides at the police station while a cop places a mannequin in his bed and waits in Bob’s closet for the murderer to show up. Or, more commonly, the cop goes undercover and poses as a hit man and gets the murderer on tape contracting the hit. That’s a pretty common sting and people get first degree murder convictions out of it.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    That’s true for most crimes. If you sneak into Bob’s bedroom and notice that he is already dead, but shoot his dead body anyway, you’ve technically only committed corpse desecration. (Setting aside the question of why you were sneaking into his bedroom with a loaded gun in the first place.) Intentionality is a central aspect of most crimes—that’s what distinguishes premeditated murder from manslaughter or felony murder.
    - megous 7y ago
      Talking to an adult is not a crime in the first place though.
      - philwelch 7y ago
        Suppose corpse desecration isn’t either, that’s not the point.
        megous 7y ago
        Why would I suppose something that's not true in the US?
- Causality1 7y ago
  So if you paid someone to kill your coworker by casting a magic spell on them you're guilty of conspiracy to commit murder? How about praying for someone to be killed? Quite a few people believe that has a non-zero chance of working. On an unrelated note, I'm surprised internet pedophiles don't ever say something like "I know you're not really a child but I'm going to pretend you are because that's hot" to create plausible deniability in the event they're not actually talking to a child.
  - sjy 7y ago
    Plenty of people have been prosecuted for conspiracies that, unbeknown to the conspirators, could not possibly have succeeded. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1979.tb01518.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-2230....
  - philwelch 7y ago
    > So if you paid someone to kill your coworker by casting a magic spell on them you're guilty of conspiracy to commit murder? By matter of pure legality, I suppose it would. In practicality, I doubt you could prove beyond reasonable doubt that such a person genuinely believed that witchcraft was an effective means of committing homicide. This point is rather academic because any reasonable person believes that propositioning people on the internet who claim to be underage girls is, in fact, an effective method of propositioning underage girls.
yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
> Are you still guilty of a crime if you only think you were going to commit a crime? If someone lies to you that they are allergic to peanuts and you secretly give them peanuts is that attempted murder? ... Yes? Intent matters; why let someone go just because they only tried to commit murder?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jimueller 7y ago
Pretty sure FBI provides fake bombs to would-be terrorists as part of sting operations, which is pretty much your example, so yes, you do charge someone with "attempted" murder.
megous 7y ago
Dependes on the country. In my country, it's not enough to charge someone even if they did think they were talking to a child. But the chance that they can be entrapped like this and get into real trouble as a result, can be enough to scare some people from attempting to do this out of boredom or frustration or whatever.
RHSeeger 7y ago
> Are you still guilty of a crime if you only think you were going to commit a crime? I'd argue that it's worth discussing whether it even matters. The goal of the legal system _should_ be to make society safer. Taking a sexual predator off the streets does make society safer, even if they didn't actually commit the crime. They did _try_ to commit the crime; they believed they were committing it. Admittedly, this falls at least partially into the realm of pre-crime. Is it fair to lock someone up because they are _going_ to commit a crime? It's in the middle ground, because they did believe they were committing the crime. But it's still also very much in the gray area as far as morality is concerned too.
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  If the point is to protect society, why are they ever let out of jail?
  - lopmotr 7y ago
    Because criminals are part of society and also need protecting from the government. Without that concept, we'd just have the death penalty for every crime, no matter how minor.
- Causality1 7y ago
  But then the question becomes whether they would have crossed the legal line if it had been an actual child instead of a bot designed to entice them. Maybe a real child would've been more hesitant and made them reconsider their course of action. Maybe a real child would've been genuinely innocent in a way that would've triggered their conscience. I'm not saying that's likely, I'm just saying this is a program designed to turn pedophiles into intended child molesters.
- samus 7y ago
  For these reasons, for many crimes even the attempt at them is punishable.
toast0 7y ago
If the articles claims are true, it would seem to me that even if the recorded conduct wasn't chargeable, it would be probable cause to see their other message history; there's most likely a pattern of behavior if you're surfing newest instagram posters and sending dickpics.
pmoriarty 7y ago
"It's a bit like leaving a fake gun on the street and then prosecuting a person who picks it up and tries to shoot somebody for attempted murder. Are you still guilty of a crime if you only think you were going to commit a crime? If someone lies to you that they are allergic to peanuts and you secretly give them peanuts is that attempted murder? If you download a song that you weren't aware is in the public domain, is that attempted copyright infringement?" You bring up an interesting question, but your examples confuse the issue. In your examples there are always real, intended victims: the person who was being shot at with the fake gun, the person who was being given peanuts, and the copyright holder are all the intended victim (despite the attempts failing due to misconceptions on the part of the perpetator). In such cases, a better analogy might be to someone trying to rob a bank with a fake (or a broken) gun. It's pretty clear that in such a case they would go to jail for attempted robbery. However, in the case where an adult pretends to be a child, there's no victim. There's real intent, but the victim is imaginary. This is similar to laws making it a crime to possess cartoon child porn. Once again, there's no victim.

philwelch 7y ago

Attempting to murder someone is still attempted murder, even if it was impossible for the attempt to succeed. Let’s say you and I both want to kill Bob. I sneak into his bedroom at night and smother him to death with a pillow. Bob is now dead and I sneak away—I have committed murder. Shortly afterwards, you sneak into his bedroom and shoot him multiple times with a gun. In this scenario, you are guilty of attempted murder even though the intended victim was already dead, unbeknownst to you. Many stings rely on similar principles. People who steal bait cars don’t actually succeed in stealing the car, nor do johns who solicit streetwalking undercover cops succeed in buying sexual favors from them.

megous 7y ago
That's something different. Here you'd be charging someone based on what they thought during the act, and not on what they did or attempted to do.
- RHSeeger 7y ago
  Not really. The murderer thought they were firing bullets into a live person. The sexual predator thought they were abusing a child. Both were incorrect about their target (dead body, grown adult). It seems to me to be a direct parallel.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    Though the better analogy might be: Bob knows that somebody is out to kill him and so he hides at the police station while a cop places a mannequin in his bed and waits in Bob’s closet for the murderer to show up. Or, more commonly, the cop goes undercover and poses as a hit man and gets the murderer on tape contracting the hit. That’s a pretty common sting and people get first degree murder convictions out of it.
- philwelch 7y ago
  That’s true for most crimes. If you sneak into Bob’s bedroom and notice that he is already dead, but shoot his dead body anyway, you’ve technically only committed corpse desecration. (Setting aside the question of why you were sneaking into his bedroom with a loaded gun in the first place.) Intentionality is a central aspect of most crimes—that’s what distinguishes premeditated murder from manslaughter or felony murder.
  - megous 7y ago
    Talking to an adult is not a crime in the first place though.
    - philwelch 7y ago
      Suppose corpse desecration isn’t either, that’s not the point.
      - megous 7y ago
        Why would I suppose something that's not true in the US?
Causality1 7y ago
So if you paid someone to kill your coworker by casting a magic spell on them you're guilty of conspiracy to commit murder? How about praying for someone to be killed? Quite a few people believe that has a non-zero chance of working. On an unrelated note, I'm surprised internet pedophiles don't ever say something like "I know you're not really a child but I'm going to pretend you are because that's hot" to create plausible deniability in the event they're not actually talking to a child.
- sjy 7y ago
  Plenty of people have been prosecuted for conspiracies that, unbeknown to the conspirators, could not possibly have succeeded. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1979.tb01518.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-2230....
- philwelch 7y ago
  > So if you paid someone to kill your coworker by casting a magic spell on them you're guilty of conspiracy to commit murder? By matter of pure legality, I suppose it would. In practicality, I doubt you could prove beyond reasonable doubt that such a person genuinely believed that witchcraft was an effective means of committing homicide. This point is rather academic because any reasonable person believes that propositioning people on the internet who claim to be underage girls is, in fact, an effective method of propositioning underage girls.

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago

> Are you still guilty of a crime if you only think you were going to commit a crime? If someone lies to you that they are allergic to peanuts and you secretly give them peanuts is that attempted murder? ... Yes? Intent matters; why let someone go just because they only tried to commit murder?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jimueller 7y ago

Pretty sure FBI provides fake bombs to would-be terrorists as part of sting operations, which is pretty much your example, so yes, you do charge someone with "attempted" murder.

megous 7y ago

Dependes on the country. In my country, it's not enough to charge someone even if they did think they were talking to a child. But the chance that they can be entrapped like this and get into real trouble as a result, can be enough to scare some people from attempting to do this out of boredom or frustration or whatever.

RHSeeger 7y ago

> Are you still guilty of a crime if you only think you were going to commit a crime? I'd argue that it's worth discussing whether it even matters. The goal of the legal system _should_ be to make society safer. Taking a sexual predator off the streets does make society safer, even if they didn't actually commit the crime. They did _try_ to commit the crime; they believed they were committing it. Admittedly, this falls at least partially into the realm of pre-crime. Is it fair to lock someone up because they are _going_ to commit a crime? It's in the middle ground, because they did believe they were committing the crime. But it's still also very much in the gray area as far as morality is concerned too.

pmoriarty 7y ago
If the point is to protect society, why are they ever let out of jail?
- lopmotr 7y ago
  Because criminals are part of society and also need protecting from the government. Without that concept, we'd just have the death penalty for every crime, no matter how minor.
Causality1 7y ago
But then the question becomes whether they would have crossed the legal line if it had been an actual child instead of a bot designed to entice them. Maybe a real child would've been more hesitant and made them reconsider their course of action. Maybe a real child would've been genuinely innocent in a way that would've triggered their conscience. I'm not saying that's likely, I'm just saying this is a program designed to turn pedophiles into intended child molesters.
samus 7y ago
For these reasons, for many crimes even the attempt at them is punishable.

toast0 7y ago

If the articles claims are true, it would seem to me that even if the recorded conduct wasn't chargeable, it would be probable cause to see their other message history; there's most likely a pattern of behavior if you're surfing newest instagram posters and sending dickpics.

pmoriarty 7y ago

"It's a bit like leaving a fake gun on the street and then prosecuting a person who picks it up and tries to shoot somebody for attempted murder. Are you still guilty of a crime if you only think you were going to commit a crime? If someone lies to you that they are allergic to peanuts and you secretly give them peanuts is that attempted murder? If you download a song that you weren't aware is in the public domain, is that attempted copyright infringement?" You bring up an interesting question, but your examples confuse the issue. In your examples there are always real, intended victims: the person who was being shot at with the fake gun, the person who was being given peanuts, and the copyright holder are all the intended victim (despite the attempts failing due to misconceptions on the part of the perpetator). In such cases, a better analogy might be to someone trying to rob a bank with a fake (or a broken) gun. It's pretty clear that in such a case they would go to jail for attempted robbery. However, in the case where an adult pretends to be a child, there's no victim. There's real intent, but the victim is imaginary. This is similar to laws making it a crime to possess cartoon child porn. Once again, there's no victim.