In recent years, it has become increasingly common for law enforcement officers to pose as children under the age of 18 on the Internet to collect evidence on and arrest people who intend to solicit minors for sex online. Law enforcement “sting operations” like this often play a significant role in Enticing a Minor cases in Connecticut, but with support from an experienced defense attorney, you can better understand what officers may lawfully do in this context and contest evidence obtained through unlawful means.
Since virtually no commonly used web platform allows users to advertise sexual encounters with minors expressly, many police sting operations centered around online enticement begin with an officer advertising sexual services online while portraying themselves as an adult, and only claiming to be a minor once a potential target reaches out to them in private. Alternatively, police officers may simply pose as a minor on a site where minors are allowed to have accounts, waiting for an adult user to attempt to solicit sex from them.
Either way, once someone falls into the trap set by the police, the officer(s) involved will typically try to arrange an in-person meeting or otherwise lead the target to put in writing their intention to engage in commercial or non-commercial sexual activity with someone they reasonably believe to be under 18. If either of those things occurs, the police have sufficient evidence to arrest the target for violating Connecticut General Statutes (C.G.S.) §53a-90a if the target resides in Connecticut.
Sting operations, if conducted in accordance with established police procedures, are completely legal in Connecticut and can produce court-admissible evidence of criminal activity. Crucially, though, police officers cannot use sting operations to “entrap” people into committing a criminal act. Unfortunately, that still occurs more often than most law enforcement authorities are willing to admit.
As per C.G.S. §53a-15, it is an affirmative defense against a criminal charge if a defendant can prove they only committed the offense in question because they were “induced” to do so directly by a police officer or someone working with police, and that they did not have and would not have had any intention of committing that act were it not for the interference of the police. So, police can arrest someone for reaching out to them online, thinking they are offering a sexual encounter with a minor, but they cannot directly initiate such a conversation with a target, actively goad them into agreeing to meet, or otherwise manipulate them into online enticement, which they initially did not intend to commit.
If this happened to you and resulted in charges for online enticement, a member of our team may be able to help you have any evidence collected by the law enforcement sting operation targeting you excluded from the case. Call Mark Sherman Law today for a confidential consultation or read verified reviews from past clients by visiting our Avvo.com profile here.
