The police, in their relentless pursuit of prosecuting sex crimes, are employing a variety of stings to catch individuals involved in these offenses. To provide you with a comprehensive understanding of the legality of police stings in sex crime cases, our team of seasoned criminal defense lawyers is here to guide you.

Basically, what this means is that if they're using ruses where they're tricking people into believing that they are, for example, underage minors seeking some sort of sexual encounter.

Social Media and Chat Rooms Sex Stings

Then, the would-be defendant has a conversation with them either over the phone, via text, via a messenger, via Snapchat, via Facebook, or through some other social media or application. Then they end up, for example, going to meet with someone who they believe is a 13 or 14-year-old for the purpose of having some sort of a sexual encounter, the police are there, and they end up arresting the person.

That's one sting that I've seen.  There's a whole host of other stings involving prostitution and chat rooms where police are posing as minors, and then the question becomes, how are the police able to do that?

Again, the sex crime cases among all cases that are filed throughout the nation, the legislature of various jurisdictions is given the most leeway to violate people's rights than any other crime that is charged.  So, the answer is absolutely yes, they can use certain sophisticated trickery in order to catch people who are committing sex-related offenses.

Now, the question then becomes — assuming they're allowed to do so — is the evidence they have against the defendant sufficient to convict them of the offense they're being charged with?  Of course, that's a different story.

That depends on what they're being charged with, what evidence the police have against them, what type of statements they made, and really, in the end, if a jury saw the evidence and the jury saw what happened, would the jury convict the person?  If the answer is yes, they would convict the person; then, obviously, that person is likely to want to negotiate some sort of a deal.

Defenses for Sex Crime Charges from Police Stings

However, there are defenses available in these situations where the police are luring individuals into serious sex-related offenses.  One such defense is that the person was entrapped in the situation.

In other words, that person would have never committed this crime but for the police goading them into it and really forcing things their way.  One big area I see this in is in the pimping and pandering area where female police officers are posing as prostitutes and then someone will come up and start talking to them.

All of a sudden they're twisting the conversation towards that person agreeing to be the pimp of the woman — maybe drive to a motel and help them in some way and then taking a piece of whatever money they're making on specific prostitution-related activities.

If somebody is stupid enough to agree to that and the police get that on tape, that person is going to be charged with pimping and pandering with a three year mandatory minimum in Los Angeles County. Pimping (CALCRIM 1150) is described under California Penal Code 266h and Pandering (CALCRIM 1151) is described under Penal Code 266i.

Then you find yourself in the position of, ' Well, I didn't really mean it. '  I was joking, or you're trying to come up with some sort of a defense.  The police tricked me.  I would have never done that.

So, these are the types of situations where the police are pretending like they're one of the victims in a sex-related offense, and then they're gathering information against a particular defendant, and they ultimately end up arresting that person.

So, a long story short, if you are the victim of a police ruse and you've been tricked and you're being prosecuted for a sex-related offense in Los Angeles, California, pick up the phone.

Retain a Sex Crime Defense Lawyer

Let's sit down and talk about how to protect yourself and see if any defenses might apply to you, to see if the prosecutors are going to be able to prove the case against you based on the evidence that they have, or whether you have some sort of a defense.

It doesn't always have to be the entrapment defense because that's not always easy to pull off.  You must be able to demonstrate that you weren't predisposed or ready to commit the crime.

There's a host of other factors you have to show — sometimes just factually you can say, I really wasn't trying to get involved in this, and come up with an alternate scenario that the police have not investigated and that the police have not thought about.

That's where you have to bounce it off a seasoned criminal defense who's handled these type of cases, asserted the type of defense that you're attempting to assert and can really give you a good assessment as to whether or not you've got a chance of success or whether it's a scenario where you're not going to be successful.

You're going to end up being convicted and getting a much worse punishment than if you had just worked out a resolution with the prosecutors in the first place.

This type of information is obviously invaluable from somebody who's battle-tested, been in jury trials in these type of cases and sees what issues the jury will look at — what issues the jury will believe — and of course, scenarios where the jury is just simply not going to believe what a particular defendant is trying to assert.

Hedding Law Firm is a highly experienced criminal defense law firm located in the San Fernando Valley at 16000 Ventura Blvd, Suite 1208, Encino, CA 91436. With a proven track record of success, we are also located in downtown Los Angeles at 633 West Fifth Street, Los Angeles, CA 90071. Contact us for a free case evaluation at (213) 542-0979.