‘The Lawyers’ Turn’

Blonde Justice, next week’s guest on PD Stuff’s Monday Musings, has a fascinating poll in progress. It began a couple weeks ago with a post called “Testing the Waters” in which Ms. Justice posed a hypothetical question about a previously-crime free man charged with a crime after responding to an internet invitation to meet a girl for sex:

I’ll start with a fairly uncomplicated example. Here’s the facts: 45 year old man, never arrested for anything, at all, in his life. He is happily married, has two beautiful children, a good solid, but not overly lucrative, job.

He did exactly what you see on Dateline. He chatted online with what he believed to be a “13 year old girl.” The subject matter of the chats was very explicit, and he sent explicit photographs of himself to her. After a number of chats, he set up a time to meet the girl. He brought condoms and lubricant. He was arrested by police at the meeting place.

That first post asked non-lawyers to respond with their thoughts about what sentence they think the man would/should get, and as of this morning 44 people had responded with comments.

Now it is the lawyers’ turn:

This new client just came into your office and laid out these facts to you. When he says, “So, how bad is it? What’s going to happen to me?” what do you tell him?

Or, prosecutors, you’ve just gotten this set of facts (and the corresponding evidence) from a detective. What kind of plea offer are you putting forth? What kind of sentence do you think the guy will ultimately get?

You can also say where you work if you want (it might give us some context), but you certainly don’t have to.

If you want, you can share what you think should happen to him, but, again, you certainly don’t have to. (I can see how it might be bad business for private attorneys to say, “I think he should fry.”)

Blonde Justice has set it up so the non-lawyers respond to the first post, and now would like lawyers to respond to the second post. She promises to post her own thoughts in the comments to her second post.