"Roger" wrote ...
(Sam Sloan) wrote ...

Wait until Judge Granade finds out that there is no child victim; just
a male adult FBI agent pretending to be a child.

The deciding factor in criminal proceedings like this are intentions.
What were his intentions? If his intention was to have sex with a 15
year old girl and went through all these actions to do so (drove to
her juvenile detention center, rented hotel room), then he's guilty.
Regardless of whether or not the person he actually talked to was 15
or 45.

Roger,

I'm with Sam Sloan on this one. To me, this is a clear case of entrapment,
in the common-sense meaning of the word--I can't speak to the legal meaning,
not being a lawyer.

All the arrangements for the meeting seem to have been handled by a law
enforcement officer, not the girl; by that time the girl was long gone from
the conversations with Sherzer.

We can't know how the conversations would have gone if they had actually
been between Sherzer and the girl. We do know how they went, with a law
enforcement officer leading on Sherzer.

My question is: How can it be a good thing for a law enforcement officer to
lead on an otherwise law-abiding individual to commit a crime? I can see the
purpose in setting up a known drug dealer or a known Mafioso or some other
known bad guy, but we have no indication here that Sherzer was a known
sexual predator who needed to be nabbed and locked up for the safety of the
community. Rather, we have a law-enforcement officer that apparently enticed
Sherzer to do something he had never done before.

And frankly, 15 isn't that young. When I was a college freshman and barely
18, I knew a pretty 16-year-old freshman girl who later became my
girlfriend. What if I had slept with her freshman year when she was 16?
Hell, I would have if I could. Should I have been locked up too? Give me a
break.

Tim Hanke