[Vision2020] Sentence Appropriate?

[Paul Rumelhart]

We know absolutely nothing about this particular case ("jack shit" is, I 
believe, the technical term).  Yet we're willing to judge the leniency 
of his sentence and to call him a pedophile and a creep on a public 
mailing list.

Here's a hypothetical situation:

Maybe this guy went to an adult chatroom, where adults talk with other 
adults about sex.  This guy strikes up a conversation with a person who 
later claims that they are 13.  Since he's on an adult chatroom, he 
figure that this person is role-playing, so he goes along with it.  The 
conversations continue, and he make some remark about how they should 
both get together and have sex, never intending to actually go through 
with it.  He was just role-playing, not making an actual date.  A couple 
of days later, he's in jail and scared for his life.  He's sees how many 
people out there assume he rapes babies on a daily basis, and he 
desperately doesn't want to go to prison for 15 years labeled as a sex 
offender because he knows that could very well happen if the prosecutor 
plays the "think of the children!" card and the jury is not very 
sophisticated about this whole online thing.  So he cops a plea and gets 
off with a reduced sentence and carries the "sex offender" brand on his 
forehead for the world to see and gets to read about how it's a crime 
that he was let out so soon and that he should be made to suffer more on 
a local mailing list.

I don't know that it went down that way, but I don't know that it didn't 
go down that way.  I, personally, would rather have more facts before I 
condemn this guy and rage about his lenient sentence.

Paul

Garrett Clevenger wrote:
> Paul writes:
>
> "this law as it stands sounds to me like thought crime."
>
>
> It's one thing to have fantasies about whatever, quite another to try to sexually engage with someone you think is 13.
>
> This isn't a thought crime cause the guy actually went out of his mind and out into the real world (even if it's a virtual computer world)
>
> This guy's a pedophile and should be locked up.
>
> I'm not a big supporter of entrapment mostly because it's probably a waste of resources but at the same time this guy pled guilty to enticing a 13 year old.
>
> That's dangerous and unacceptable in our wired world.
>
> When I read this story in the paper I too thought the sentence was way to light for this creep.
>
>
> I'll hesitatingly give you a Stegner story that may give you an idea of Stegner:
>
> 3 years ago, we brought our baby to a restaurant after he was born. He was sitting in his car seat in the restaurant when up walked a guy who asked if he could hold him. I said sure while my wife had a horrified look on her face.  I guess I wasn't as cautious as I should have been letting a stranger pick up our baby.
>
> The guy walked outside with our baby. My wife ran after him and asked for her baby back.
>
> It turned out the guy was Stegner.  His wife came up later to apologize for him and said he really likes kids.
>
> It was one thing to want to hold a baby, quite another to leave the restaurant with him.  We were all taken back by this and wondered why a judge, someone who probably sees all kinds of creepy things, would be so thoughtless as to think leaving the restaurant with someone else's baby wouldn't freak the parents out.
>
> I don't know Stegner, but that incident left me wondering about his judging capabilities.  Seeing his sentencing reaffirms that.
>
> Garrett Clevenger
>
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