Backgrounder to the case:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/nyregion/gilberto-valle-is-found-guilty-in-cannibal-case.html
EXCERPT:
A New York police officer was convicted on Tuesday in a bizarre plot to kidnap, torture, kill and eat women, ending a trial whose outcome hinged on a delicate distinction between fantasy and reality.
The trial had drawn widespread attention, in part because it involved an officer’s disturbing behavior, but also because it raised a fundamental question: When does a virtual crime, contemplated in Internet chat rooms, become an actual crime?
There was no evidence that any of the women whom the officer, Gilberto Valle, was accused of plotting to kill were harmed. But prosecutors argued that the officer took actual steps to further his plot, like conducting surveillance of potential victims.
Mr. Valle, 28, could receive life in prison for one count of kidnapping conspiracy when he is sentenced on June 19. The Police Department fired him upon conviction.
His lawyer, Julia L. Gatto, called the verdict “devastating” and said the government had not proved its case. “This was a thought prosecution,” she said. “These are thoughts, very ugly thoughts, but we don’t prosecute people for their thoughts. And we’ll continue to appeal and continue to fight for Mr. Valle.”
The trial highlighted some of the darkest corners of the Internet, where fetishists hide behind Web identities like Girlmeat Hunter — the name that Mr. Valle used — and engage in role-playing fantasy about cannibalism and sexual torture.
Don’t worry, Valle! Soon enough the death-worshiping Leftists will make paraphilia another sexual orientation!
So what would be the use of a mental test for purchasing a firearm, if one never did anything bad, but just fantasized about it?
Would this guy have passed the test?
Reading to many erotic fantasy snuff comics!
“which included accessing the National Crime Information Center’s database from his NYPD patrol car computer”
There’s the ‘catch’. If it was unauthorized use then that is why he was found guilty. If he had authorized access to the database then he is not guilty.
But we all knew that the thought police were avid already. It is another nail in the coffin.
I guess for Halloween this year, I will be wearing an Easter bunny costume.
In my opinion, he was NOT guilty of conspiracy to kidnap, because, as the article explains, there was no identified victim, and no evidence of attempts to carry out any crime.
You should be allowed to WRITE about committing a crime, without being convicted of it.
However, is was certainly guilty of illegal access to a database. He had no right to use his position an an officer to get information from the crime database. And if he shared that information with others, I would think there could be additional charges for that as well, but I guess he didn’t.
I know, people want to be “safe”, but we can’t give up our liberties in the hopes that occasionally we might catch a criminal. We can’t arrest a thousand people for writing about a crime, just so that in one case we stop the actual crime.
We cannot get into “pre-crime”. When we prosecute people for what they think about doing, we have stepped over a line to tyranny. A person should be allowed to think about doing bad, so long as they stop themselves before they actually start to do bad.
I have come to a different take on what the legal response to the discoveries about this individual should have led to. In my view it should not be his “criminal conviction” but legally enforced institutionalization in a mental hospital.
He most likely did not commit a criminal offense, but I would take his self-admitted mental problem as a public risk if not under institutionalized observation. I do not personally believe that such an individual obsesesses on the cannibalistic fanatasies he does and never, ever, ever hopes to realize them in reality.
I am all opposed to mere “hate crimes”, but a mere “hate crime” is an entirely different area of “thought” than insanity.
His case, like recent mass shooting cases, reflect, in my view, our modern social unwillingness to error on the side of public safety over the Liberty of the insane. I recognize that we can cause grave error either way. That if we swing the pendelum back to error more on the side of public safety, there may develop, down the rode, a slippery slope over the definition of “criminally insane”. I realize it is an error without perfect solutions and only vigilence can trim our excesses, though I acknowledge our excesses must usually incur some harm to someone before we realize we have gone to far. It’s not a perfect world; nor ever will be.