Failed sting endangers kids
Matthew Adair
Issue date: 7/11/07 Section: Opinions
PrintEmail DoubleClick Any Word Page 1 of 1 We generally assume that, in this country, justice is blind, and is handled by those who have nothing to gain or lose should an investigation or trial turn one way or the other. This way, we ensure that the prosecution of illegal activity is handled with fairness and dignity towards both accuser and accused.
However, there has also long existed a lingering desire in people from various backgrounds to take the law into their own hands and reach their own solution to a perceived injustice. This love of vigilantism saturates our culture, to such an extent that a Texas man is now dead as a result of a botched television sting.
The program in question is NBC's prime-time news program, "Dateline," which was in Murphy, Texas, shooting part of its "To Catch A Predator" series, which focuses on luring pedophiles into the open for arrest.
The program led to charges being filed against 25 people in Murphy, a suburb of Dallas. The show's crew was assisted by a group called Perverted Justice, which baits potential child predators online by using adults who pose as young children on Internet chat rooms.
One of the people caught in the sting, however, was Louis Conradt, Jr., chief felony assistant attorney for Rockwall County, Texas. With the police knocking on his door and a "Dateline" crew waiting eagerly to capture the bust on film, a horrified Conradt shot himself.
Conradt's suicide was only the beginning of the train wreck that the show's so-called investigation rapidly turned into. The program, as well as members of Perverted Justice, contacted Murphy City Manager Craig Sherwood when setting the sting up about using a two-story house in a residential neighborhood as a base to lure suspects to. Sherwood gave the green light to the sting and, in an astounding feat of ignorance, decided not to inform the mayor or the City Council about it.
As though this weren't bad enough, Collin County District Attorney John Roach announced that all charges brought up by "Dateline" and their investigation were to be dropped. In 16 of the cases, neither the suspect nor the online decoy was in Collin County when the chats occurred. In the remaining cases, neither the police nor NBC could guarantee that the chat logs used to incriminate the suspects were complete and accurate.
So, to summarize, a network television program attempted to play judge, jury and executioner, using members of an organization bent on using any means possible to stop child predators by catching them in sexual chat conversations.
Meanwhile, this television program set up shop in a house inside a busy residential neighborhood, two blocks away from an elementary school, luring the same people they suspected of being pedophiles into said house in order to catch them on camera and arrest them.
Because people who had no training in police procedure ran this operation, all of the evidence and accusations were thrown out. If anyone rounded up in the sting was a pedophile interested in targeting a child in that community, they are now walking free, at least until they actually do go after someone's child.
Way to stick it to the bad guys there, "Dateline" crew, if it can be said that anyone did anything illegal at all here. Without concrete evidence that shows any of the 25 people charged in the sting explicitly solicited a child for sex, none of them actually did anything illegal.
In the mean time, Murphy's City Council settled its differences with Sherwood to the tune of a quarter million dollars paid out to the resigning City Manager. "Dateline" and NBC, although burned somewhat by the whole fiasco, have decided to go ahead and air two more episodes of "To Catch A Predator" this month. Everyone seems to have benefitted here except for the people of Murphy itself, as well as the individuals accused of soliciting a child, particularly Conradt and his family.
Programs like "Dateline: To Catch A Predator" are driven by the desires of our instant-everything culture for instant justice. Child molestation cases are terrible things to grapple with, and it goes without saying that no one, no matter their age, should have to experience abuse, sexual or otherwise, from anyone. Those who commit such acts should be punished severely.
However, when the desire to see justice done is driven by revenge or profit, or when the law is taken into the hands of people who do not have the knowledge, resources or training needed to successfully build a case against a suspect, nothing is gained. Innocent people end up harmed or endangered; those who are guilty often go free on otherwise trivial technicalities.
The "Dateline" camera crew is no different from the lynch mobs of a hundred years ago - the fact that their equipment consists of cameras and microphones instead of ropes and shotguns doesn't change the essential fact that they are attempting to decide who is and isn't guilty on the arbitrary basis of online conversations whose reliability can only be verified by those making the accusations.
People crave a spectacle, searching for drama in all aspects of life, whether they are conscious of this or not. Network television, like any good business, knows exactly how to respond to consumer demands. The investigation of criminal behavior, however, should never be dictated by the whim of the market, and the work of justice should be carried out fairly, and should never be done in a way that puts an entire community at risk.
"Dateline" should pull the plug on "To Catch A Predator," and admit to itself and the viewing public that the work of catching criminals should be left in the hands of those in uniform. Maybe then, justice can be served, for everyone involved.
Matthew Adair is a senior art education major and can be reached at matt.adair@gmail.com.
