Contributed by: filbert Friday, August 05 2005 @ 07:36 AM CST
U.S. District Judge Dean Whipple acquitted Jan Helder yesterday of using the Internet to try to entice a child into sex. Helder’s attorney, J.R. Hobbs, had argued that his client didn’t break federal law because the person his client was accused of enticing wasn’t a minor but a Platte County deputy pretending to be a minor. The ruling came just minutes after a jury returned a guilty verdict. Helder, 42, of Mission Hills, Kan., had faced a sentence of five to 30 years.
The real news is that a judge actually read and enforced the law as written. He seems to have this curious idea that in order to commit a crime, you actually have to do something that’s against the law, not just intend to do so. Since I consider the concept of a “thought crime” to be abhorrent, I side with the judge here. And no, that doesn’t mean I think that pedophilia is OK, quite the reverse. Discuss amongst yourselves . . .