Judge Frees "Cannibal Cop" Who Shared His Fantasies Online 185
AthanasiusKircher (1333179) writes The story is classic: Boy meets Girl. Boy likes Girl. Boy goes on the internet and writes about his fantasies that involve killing and eating Girl. Boy goes to jail. In this case, the man in question, NYC police officer Gilberto Valle, didn't act on his fantasies — he just shared them in a like-minded internet forum. Yesterday, Valle was released from jail after a judge overturned his conviction on appeal. U.S. District Judge Paul Gardephe wrote that Valle was "guilty of nothing more than very unconventional thoughts... We don't put people in jail for their thoughts. We are not the thought police and the court system is not the deputy of the thought police." The judge concluded that there was insufficient evidence, since "this is a conspiracy that existed solely in cyberspace" and "no reasonable juror could have found that Valle actually intended to kidnap a woman... the point of the chats was mutual fantasizing about committing acts of sexual violence on certain women." (A New York magazine article covered the details of the case and the implications of the original conviction earlier this year.)
First "OMG the common sense" post (Score:4, Insightful)
That's fairly surprising, and really quite reasonable.
Re:First "OMG the common sense" post (Score:5, Insightful)
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The arrests for terrorism only happen when there is an overt act taken in the real world (aka "meatspace") where an actual attempt is made to do damage. The cops just ensure that the damage isn't actually possible, but the target of their investigation doesn't know that.
That said, those cases do need to be very carefully reviewed for entrapment concerns. If the cops are coercing or near-brainwashing someone with a weak personality into doing something that they wouldn't otherwise do then there is a big pr
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I would think the fantasizing, "I am going to have to use the database to find someone who fits these parameters" would be the fantasy, and actually using the database to find someone who meets the target requirements would be the overt act.
Re:First "OMG the common sense" post (Score:4, Informative)
I would think the fantasizing, "I am going to have to use the database to find someone who fits these parameters" would be the fantasy, and actually using the database to find someone who meets the target requirements would be the overt act.
Except that's not what happened, at least according to what I've read. He used the database not to FIND victims, but to look up personal information about women he already knew. It's still abuse of police power, and he should be punished for that (and was).
The question is whether he ever appeared to use that information in any way that would further his supposed "conspiracy." And the actual evidence says that not only did he NOT use that information to plan attacks, but he deliberately kept that information to himself. He never shared any information from the databases with his supposed "co-conspirators," and in fact deliberately changed up personal details of the supposed "victims" (including mixing in false things with true) when he posted about his fantasies.
If he were actually trying to use this information to plan an elaborate plot to kill people, why would he intentionally avoid sharing this (illegally-obtained) information with his "conspirators" and why would he feed them false information? On the other hand, if he was a generally law-abiding cop who felt guilty about his inappropriate access to personal data and actually wanted to be sure his "conspirators" never went too far, his behavior makes perfect sense.
Furthermore, in terms of "overt acts," one needs to consider the history of all of these "plots." There were many, many "plots" hatched, dates mentioned, all sorts of details given, but there's no evidence that any of these actors in the "conspiracy" ever actually took actions in the real world to make any of these detailed plots possible. This would suggest that there was no intention to actually carry out most of these "plots," and the burden of proof is on the prosecutor to prove that some particular plot was ever actually serious and set in motion... since in context, it's clear the default was that the plots were fantasy.
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In a conspiracy charge, the overt act doesn't have to be harmful or illegal in itself, and AFAICT they are not properly reviewed for entrapment. In this case, the perp did indeed look up information on women he fantasized about, and there have been conspiracy convictions with more innocuous overt acts.
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Presumably he'll get some sort of mandatory time in front of a psychiatrist to make sure he's fit for active duty.
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Hand him a badge and gun, right now.
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Your sig: "Eat Locals!" somehow does not go well with the case you just argued :-).
> I am sure if a common person used a database to collect information on the judge or the judge's family and then wrote a detailed plan of how the family was to be murdered, we would not be getting of with a simple misuse of private information.
Which is why the law will not allow that judge to take up that case because he will no longer be able to judge objectively. That argument... what if he did it to the judge?... is n
Re:First "OMG the common sense" post (Score:4, Informative)
The courts do and have sent people to jail for fantasies. It is called conspiracy.
NO.
As this judge correctly pointed out, there is a difference between discussing fantasies and conspiracy. One is mere thoughts, or discussion of ideas. The other requires not just an agreement among parties to do something specific, in the Unites States almost always an "overt act" must be carried out to make it actual conspiracy.
For example: two guys discuss for years that they want to rob the rich guy down the street. As long as they are just talking, they haven't broken any laws. They can plan all they want to. They can fantasize about using bombs, shotguns, pitchforks, or whatever the hell they please in order to do the job. But as soon as they meet in a parking lot to go do it, or one of them starts building one of the discussed bombs in his basement, they are guilty of conspiracy.
The point is: in the U.S. you generally have freedom of speech and you can say pretty much whatever you want. But as soon as you ACT to carry out some crime you were discussing with someone, you are guilty of conspiracy. THAT is the difference between "thought crime" and actual crime.
Wikipedia puts it this way:
Under most U.S. laws, for a person to be convicted of conspiracy not only must he or she agree to commit a crime, but at least one of the conspirators must commit an overt act...
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It is because he was a cop
Nope. [wikipedia.org]. This has happened before, it will happen again. There's a substantial cultural skein in this country that thinks feeling threatened should be enough to jail the cause. Judges, fortunately, still know that thoughts are not crimes. Expressing thoughts is not a crime. Desires are not crimes. Expressing desires is not a crime. Somebody claiming they feel threatened by you does not constitute you making a threat. Making a threat is a crime. Somebody saying "if Obama shows up, somebody's going to shoot
Re:First "OMG the common sense" post (Score:5, Informative)
Actually he _was_ convicted of misusing the DB (max sentence 12 months). He's been in jail for more than 18 months so at this point, he has served more than enough to satisfy the highest possible sentence.
As a side note, the most disturbing part of this case to me, was Valle's illegal use of the DB to find out information about people for purely personal reasons. I'm sort of shocked that such a crime carries a max 12 month sentence. What that says to me is that law enforcement agencies and the governments that set them up, don't really care how their own misuse government power. Nor does the media for the most part as demonstrated by the thousands of words spent on the prurient charms of this case, but in any article, there is at most a single sentence about the DB issue.
Here's an example:
Tabloid same as NY Times, you'll have to search the page for "database" to find that single sentence.:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... [dailymail.co.uk]
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07... [nytimes.com]
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Yeah, max 12 months? If it were a civilian misusing a government database (probably via DANGEROUS HAXORING!!) to find out personal information about police officers, they'd probably be charged separately for each officer they looked up, with 10 years per offense under the CFAA.
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I'm sort of shocked that such a crime carries a max 12 month sentence. What that says to me is that law enforcement agencies and the governments that set them up, don't really care how their own misuse government power.
Are you saying that a year in prison is not long enough for illegal use of a database? That seems like a suitable punishment to me.
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If you aren't a member of the government, the same or less will get you a decade or more. What I meant without being clear enough, was that the special treatment is shocking given the special access government officials have. If the government cared about people's privacy, those in a position of trust who fail to safeguard that privacy would be subject to the same or more punishment as any random person who did the same thing.
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Yes, now let's hope that they extend the result of this ruling to apply to all citizens, not just ones in employ of the King (by which I mean the government).
I'm not so sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
If this was just a guy posting trash on Facebook I'd probably side with you. If you read the details of the case, you will find that this is not just someone ranting. This appears to be someone conspiring to commit rape, murder, and kidnapping.
Whether the primary web site has a disclaimer or not, does not change the fact that this goes beyond the simple act of writing about a sick fantasy. He offered to kidnap someone for 5,000.00. He went and found a recipe for chloroform, then built a pulley system to string up one of the people he was talking about kidnapping and murdering. He used a Police database illegally for the purpose of gathering personal information about the people he appeared to be conspiring against (it was more than 1). This goes well beyond simply discussing "unconventional thoughts".
Lets change the scenario a bit. If I was to claim I want to kill someone on Facebook, I'd be a person of interest but not doing anything illegal. When I go out and search for recipes for poisons, I'm still not illegal but I should be under watch, especially if the poison is generic household items which I may have on hand. Once I start illegally gathering personal information about the targets I claimed I want to kill, would I not be conspiring to commit murder? What if I owned a gun, would that be enough? (Remember that this person was a Cop and had a Gun, as well as a position of authority to abuse, and could have been legally stalking victims without anyone's knowledge on "patrols")
If you believe it's reasonable, would you want the guy as a neighbor? Invite them over over for dinner? If so, good for you. I'd prefer to see a person like this under watch and psychological monitoring at a minimum.
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Under watch is OK, but that's not the same as in jail.
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Re:I'm not so sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
Where's the line between "fantasy" and "conspiring"?
Surely you must have one defined to be able to make your judgement call?
And what's up with restricting people we find creepy for what they might do? I honestly think you are creepy and that you have the potential to commit some heinous acts. Should we put you under constant watch and psych monitoring too?
Due process. It's not a difficult concept.
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Where's the line between "fantasy" and "conspiring"?
GP laid that out pretty well. General information searches on methods to kill = watch list/fantasy. Specific information on a target, gathering materials = crime/conspiring. (the latter is apparently what the cannibal cop was doing)
And what's up with restricting people we find creepy for what they might do?
Because peoples rights go beyond just not getting killed. If some psychopath is continuously harassing and threatening to do something terrible, they are a
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Pretty sure the differences between "fantasy" and "conspiring" are what ACTIONS you actually take to plot or do something.
Writing about how to make a bomb, or talking about it, could just be fantasy. Buying the components, constructing things, etc... point to a more real intent.
Likely it is a judgement call, but likely based on what evidence. Context is likely a big thing. Talking on a forum is one thing, then again directed cooperation, and planning might be something else.
In this case, the act of using a
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The line is obviously when a person takes actions that would lead to their talk becoming action, as was the facts in this case. (Read TFA's links)
For example, I disagree with the US putting the teenager in jail for claiming on Facebook that if he could he would shoot the President. That is was only talk, and not illegal in my opinion. The FBI may have ran some checks on the teen to make sure he was not plotting after making the statement, but the statement alone was not enough to jail him.
Now, if the teen
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Correction. He posted a message saying that he was in the middle of building a pulley system. That's not the same as having actually built it. It's consistant with him building a fantasy scenario on that site..
Pff (Score:2)
Could have been ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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... a novelist or script writer or something. Imagine Hitchcock or Stephen King before they made it big. They must have such dark thoughts, some of them committed to paper.
About their girlfriend? Is there a difference between general deviant thought and deviant thoughts against a specific person you interact with regularly? Just askin...
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The trick now is to re-phrase your death threats in the form of a fictional story, poem, or lyric and post it online as a work of art. Recall that movie that involved a plot to assassinate Bush?
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Not really.
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"People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk." -Stephen King
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I take it (Score:2)
Re:I take it (Score:4, Interesting)
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Personally, it kinda reminds me of all the heterosexuals I have seen claim that what they were doing was not child abuse because 'they are not gay'.... every time I hear people talking about how people with fetishes will go to n
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Especially given the way that they are presented with carefully doctored evidence, and they way other relevant evidence is excluded. And the way they aren't allowed to ask questions when they are uncertain about what something means.
Well....perhaps the fault isn't strictly that of the jury.
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He went victim-shopping on a classified police database, the only charge that actually stuck.
Dude wasn't just fantasizing, he was conspiring.
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I have to agree. If someone posts Jihadist fantasies online and is also heavily involved in a pyrotechnic hobby, I think we (law enforcement) step in and do something about it. Kids have been arrested and tried as adults when they had notebooks filled with very detailed Columbine-like plots against their schools. You are free to have creepy thoughts all you want, but if those thoughts appear to a jury to be a murder or terrorist plot, then be prepared to serve some time for those thought.
Would be different (Score:5, Insightful)
I bet you if he wrote about child pornography or terrorism it would be a different story.
However, I agree with the judgement. It's a very slippery slop once that line is crossed and you have to take the good with the bad when you want ANY freedom.
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I bet you if he wrote about child pornography or terrorism it would be a different story.
Tom Clancy penned a novel in 1994 that ended with a 767 being flown into the United States Capitol. Seven years before 9/11. Nobody put him in jail, before or after.
Re:Would be different (Score:5, Funny)
Tom Clancy penned a novel in 1994 that ended with a 767 being flown into the United States Capitol. Seven years before 9/11. Nobody put him in jail, before or after.
Because it was mostly politicians being killed. And because Harrison Ford survived.
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I bet you if he wrote about child pornography or terrorism it would be a different story.
Tom Clancy penned a novel in 1994 that ended with a 767 being flown into the United States Capitol. Seven years before 9/11. Nobody put him in jail, before or after.
I'm still waiting for the Teeth of the Tiger shopping-mall attacks. We saw what happened in Kenya recently. Just imagine that in several malls across the US.
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I'm still waiting for the Teeth of the Tiger shopping-mall attacks. We saw what happened in Kenya recently. Just imagine that in several malls across the US.
The scenarios from Larry Bond's The Enemy Within are also pretty scary. If they came to pass, it's likely the entire US highway system would be completely TSA'd.
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I think the fact that those kinds of attacks haven't happened is a very good argument that terrorism is highly overstated.
Despite all our collective disgust with cameras, eavesdropping, and so on, America remains a very easy society to move about freely and there is very little security over the kinds of targets terrorists would have a field day with, like shopping malls, power substations, oil refineries, and so on.
What effect on the economy would a series of coordinated attacks on malls have on the day af
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Perhaps an end to the insanity that is Black Friday and the Christmas season in general? Shopping being better-distributed throughout the year rather than packed into a month? Should be a long-term win. Hell, if I were a cop I'd fantasize about doing it for just those reasons.
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If the plot from Invasion USA starts to be implemented, I am holding Chuck Norris personally responsible to get out there and kill ALL the terrorists. With his fists. While drinking hot tea.
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After 9/11 we actually got pretty good at keeping terrorists from getting to the United States,
Actually, no. Some noteworthy [wikipedia.org] cases involve people in our military. That is getting pretty deep into our society, IMO. What we are good at doing is keeping a lid on the extremism that allows such people to organize and plan something more destructive than a crazed lone gunman.
Most of the Muslims in this country are much less extreme than their brethern in the Middle East. I guess they look around and figure that they have things pretty damned good here compared to back home.
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Uhh, he was a natural born American citizen, so how exactly do you propose we keep him out of the United States? I was referring to foreign terrorists, in fact I believe I even made a comment about would-be domestic terrorists having an easier go of it.
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That's FUD. Yes the Southern Border is porous. Find me one example of a terrorist that has entered the country via that route. Just one. I'm not aware of it having happened. The United States shares intelligence with Mexico and Canada, so you're still dealing with the same fundamental problem of getting into the Western Hemisphere without being detected. Effectively you've given the security forces two bites at your apple, because you're going to have to sneak past Canadian/Mexican customs and America
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That's because he wrote it in English. If he had written the book in Arabic, it would have been classified as a terrorist training manual.
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You mean Debt of Honor [wikipedia.org], right? It was apparently a 747.
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The conservative talk radio stuff was yammering about that when it happened. G. Gordon Liddy was praising one of the victims, a man who had predicted hijacked airplanes hitting the World Trade center [wikipedia.org] and insisted on either leaving or training for evacuation without the aid of useless first-responders. This is a man who got all of his people out of Tower 2, then went back in to find anyone else that might be in there. The damn thing collapsed with him in it.
Then, conservative politicians pop up talking
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I could imagine that. Clancey: "Didn't I tell you this was gonna happen? What are you retarded? Is your head full of rice instead of brains?"
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When politicians came out and said NOBODY EVER THOUGHT OF USING PLANES AS MISSLES!" [youtube.com]...I thought...don't any of them read Clancy?
They don't read. Period.
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Glad you're already +5, because my mod points expired yesterday. The judge wouldn't have given him a second look if it was pedophilic(?) fiction, despite falling under the same kind of fantasy. (Of course, as others have mentioned, him being a cop probably landed him on the good side of the judge and a common citizen wouldn't have been freed.)
Disgusting though it is, disgust should not be used as the main criteria for laws.
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I bet you if he wrote about child pornography or terrorism it would be a different story.
Is it? If so, why?
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I bet you if he wrote about child pornography or terrorism it would be a different story.
Is it? If so, why?
Yes. Public (or press projected) perception, sensativity, and/or fear.
Although a terrorism writing may have more latitude since shows like 24 are all the rage.
Reading the article is seemed like it was pulled straight from an episode of Criminal Minds IMO.
Government Approved Fantasies (Score:4, Insightful)
Include:
-Working hard
-Buying things
-Having a family
All other fantasies will be regarded as anti-social
What kind of violence? (Score:2)
>mutual fantasizing about committing acts of sexual violence
Umm, it sounded like acts of culinary violence to me.
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No, that would be Denny's.
Conspiracy to commit... (Score:2)
What is the difference between "talking about murder fantasies" and "conspiracy to commit murder"?
"Honestly, I wasn't trying to get my wife killed, I was just really upset and venting steam, it's not my fault a professional hit-man decided to help me out"
Conspiracy != fantasy (Score:3)
The difference is that in a conspiracy someone plans to DO something unlawful, or cause someone else to do it... and not just talk about it. A "conspiracy" is "a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful". A fantasy is just the "activity of imagining things".
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A conspiracy becomes criminal itself when there's an overt act. In some previous cases, the act itself has been pretty innocuous. In this case, he apparently googled for information and did illegal searches on a database to get information on women he apparently fantasized about.
I'm not real comfortable with either possible verdict, but I'm positive that, if I were to do this, I'd be behind bars for a long, long time.
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Dilbert Goes Bizzerk (Score:2)
The line between detailed fantasies and "planning murder" is still fuzzy. I've had detailed visions involving paper clips, rubber-bands, and staplers of things I wanted to do to torture egotistical conniving moronic co-workers. (It was just torture, not death.) It's a great catharsis, therapeutic even.
Oh oh, I hear footsteps... [NO CARRIER]
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Exploding moon missing? (Score:2)
The story is classic: Boy meets Girl. Boy likes Girl. Boy goes on the internet and writes about his fantasies that involve killing and eating Girl. Boy goes to jail.
If the story is truly a classic, where's the silvery moon which then explodes for no adequately explored reason!?
News for nerds (Score:2)
Stuff that's delicious.
Goodbye judge (Score:2)
"We don't put people in jail for their thoughts. We are not the thought police and the court system is not the deputy of the thought police."
Clearly, he doesn't understand the intent of modern American government.
Kiddie Porn? (Score:2)
You can't go to jail for saying you want... (Score:2)
... to eat people on line.
That said, maybe this guy shouldn't be a cop.
We don't? (Score:3)
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/14/07/03/1846215/nsa-considers-linux-journal-readers-tor-and-linux-users-extremists
we don't put people in jail for unconventional thoughts eh?
Oh wait, only if they are STEM graduates.
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Didn't he use a police database to look for women? Didn't he browse the web looking for ways to cook human flesh?
Fuck this guy.
What ever floats your boat, dude.
Seriously, Timothy - just why is this on Slashdot? Are you channeling something? Is this a hint? Are we trying to compete with the New York Daily News?
Does this actually matter?
Re:Should probably be locked up (Score:4, Interesting)
Because a lot of us are freedom nerds, and this ruling is interesting in that it was allowed to go to trial, but the judge issued a judgment notwithstanding the verdict that preserves free thought.
As to GP post, yes, they should have tried him for any crimes he committed using the police database, and I obviously assume he's no longer Popo, but this was not an actual conspiracy to commit a crime, locking people up because they are gross under the guise of conspiracy is not the solution to anything.
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Trying to paint this as against free thought is patently ridiculous given that he not only thought something, sharing it with other freaks and then taking logical, detailed steps in order to make what he was thinking reality. This is someone that should be locked up, preferably in a psychiatric institution. Other people have rightfully been locked up for good for less!
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From TFA: "Gilberto Valle was 25 years old and still living with his father in Queens when, in 2009, he met Kathleen Mangan on OKCupid."
OKC strikes again! Someone met a creeper on OKC who still lived with their parents? Imagine that....
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What's wrong with that? Lots of amusing things come up when you Google that [google.com]. Hell, Google auto completed the search for me, suggesting "recipes" after I had typed in "human meat".
Incidentally, I'm not much of a whiz in the kitchen, but I suspect human flesh would work pretty well in a red sauce or curry. The bigger problem of course would be the cost of obtaining it, followed by the difficulty of obtaining lean cuts, particularly if you reside in the first world....
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A western liver of a commited cereal eater should be like a good fois gras.
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It's hard to find deer meat at the local grocery store, but yet all my friends have tons deer sausage overflowing out of their freezer. The key is to simply change your mindset and harvest the "wildlife" you see coming out of a vegan restaurant. Myself, I like corn-feed meat, so I would probably set up my hunting blind in a Golden Corral parking lot. I've been told it tastes like veal.
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Re:Is this true? (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't put people in jail for their thoughts.
I'm not convinced this is true.
Neither was the judge, I take it. I believe that was a statement to remind us how we intend to live not how we do live.
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We don't put people in jail for their thoughts.
I'm not convinced this is true.
You should have said "I don't think this is true." And then immediately been incarcerated.
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I don't even know how they could arrest the guy. He had done nothing at that point, he had made no plans to do anything, no tools, according to his ex who installed spyware on his computer, he was supposedly writing on anonymous fetish sites.
I presume you're basing this assumption on the contents of TFS.
I read some other articles about this case yesterday - he bought the tools, and used a classified police database to shop for victims. To me, that's a bit past "fantasy" and more into "planning to do this shit."
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Unless you can prove he actually was planning to do so, it doesn't matter. He could've been looking for people to fantasize about, rather than planning on actually doing it.
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And the dude that bragged to his friends how he'll break into some rich family's home, torture, rape and kill everyone there? When he buys a gun and starts googling for good targets he should be locked up!
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Only if you can prove he really was about to do something.
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Only if you can prove he really was about to do something.
Let's be realistic here - if he wasn't a government agent, he'd already be in jail.
Like these people [huffingtonpost.com].
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Then it would probably a good idea to make sure *no one* goes to jail for such things.
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Wow! You are *multiple* kinds of moron! Very impressive. Please don't breed.
1) You can't prove anybody is "about" to do something of their own volition. By your (idiotic) reasoning, I should be permitted to walk down the street with a loaded pistol in each hand, pointing one at anybody who gets within twenty feet of me or makes eye contact. After all, you can't prove I'm going to shoot anybody who doesn't attack me first!
2) Even if you can establish a reasonable proof that somebody *intended* to do somethin
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Wow! You are *multiple* kinds of moron! Very impressive. Please don't breed.
Funny, I think the same about you. Your post doesn't convince me of anything.
1) You can't prove anybody is "about" to do something of their own volition. By your (idiotic) reasoning, I should be permitted to walk down the street with a loaded pistol in each hand, pointing one at anybody who gets within twenty feet of me or makes eye contact. After all, you can't prove I'm going to shoot anybody who doesn't attack me first!
No, by my logic, there's no proof or reason to think that it was anything beyond fantasy. I know you hate it, but you have to prove things beyond a shadow of a doubt in order to convict someone. I do not think that happened here, and neither does this judge, apparently.
But you seem more focused on arguing semantics than you do about the issue at hand. Begone, insect.
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can you *prove* I'm not just going to change my mind and just grill up some really good burgers instead?
I suppose not. You're off the hook, hopefully.
4) Even regarding things in the past, there's generally no such thing as proof of who committed a crime. If I watch a guy shoot somebody, make a citizen's arrest until the cops get there, and they take him away... can I truly confirm that the person sitting handcuffed across the courtroom from me two weeks later is the same person I watched kill another person?
It always baffles me when I use a word like "proof" and people like you feel the need to be 'smart' and go off ranting about how you can't truly prove much of anything, as if I'm not already aware of that. Substitute the lone word "proof" for "beyond a reasonable doubt" or something. Was that so hard?
True proof is impossible.
While we're fucking around, can you prove that?
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I don't think so. Again, prove he was about to take action and you're good. I don't care if you think something is unlikely.
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I don't think he actually bought the tools. He was googling around for some of them, and for a recipe for chloroform, but I just read the New Yorker article and it didn't say he bought any of the tools. He talked about having an oven he could fit a woman in, but didn't actually own such an oven. He also talked about having a cabin in the woods they could take a victim, but he didn't own such a cabin.
If he had bought the tools, yeah I'd say a conspiracy to commit murder charge might be appropriate, but he di
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I don't think he actually bought the tools. He was googling around for some of them, and for a recipe for chloroform, but I just read the New Yorker article and it didn't say he bought any of the tools. He talked about having an oven he could fit a woman in, but didn't actually own such an oven. He also talked about having a cabin in the woods they could take a victim, but he didn't own such a cabin.
If he had bought the tools, yeah I'd say a conspiracy to commit murder charge might be appropriate, but he didn't. So it was still in the realm of fantasy.
What, you mean a mainstream media outlet gave me bad info? Inconceivable!
Regardless, the whole thing is creepy as fuck. Ordinarily, I wouldn't give a crap what somebody's fantasy or fetish is. Their business. Even this guy's. But once he started naming names and making plans, that pushes it over the edge. That is a hard, hard thing to say "live and let live" about.
Agreed; add in the fact that non-government-agent types who have done pretty much the same thing were not let off so lightly. [msn.com]
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He had done nothing at that point, he had made no plans to do anything[...]
It might not be in the particular article linked above, but this guy was using police databases to research a bunch of women. I'm certainly not happy leaving people like that to their own devices.
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Assault someone with a bat and go to jail for 5 years. Say, "I hate black people!" while doing it and go to jail for 15 years.
So yeah, we DO put people in jail for thoughts.
Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Hate crime legislation DOES punish thoughts: we've decided that what you were thinking at the time of a crime somehow makes your crime worse than that of someone who wasn't thinking "hateful thoughts". If we hold to the principle that "the punishment must fit the crime," then hate crime laws seem to directly criminalize certain thoughts, which in the USA seems to come dangerously close to treading on the freedom of thought and expression protected by the first amendme
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We've always had different standards of punishments for different thoughts. State of mind is the difference between manslaughter, murder in the 2nd degree and murder in the 1st degree.
Hate crime consideration in sentencing is appropriate, because of the intent to terrorize a population in addition to the act committed.
If your neighbor is murdered by a business partner to collect insurance money, that's murder in the first degree. Terrible thing. Premeditated. You might be creeped out for awhile, but you fee
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If you've bothered to notice, sentences depend on a lot of things, including the intention of the criminal. There are things that are crimes depending on the person's thoughts: many laws have words like "knowingly" in them.
As far as I've found in the US, "hate crime" isn't a concerned unless there's a crime already involved. It only comes into play in determining the sentence.
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Except that the crime is assault. I think it shouldn't be a charge of its own, but I see no problem with a zeroth degree murder charge or assault with a racist insult.