AIKEN - By many accounts, South Carolina's tough, new law protecting children from Internet sex predators has been a smashing success.
Since it was introduced in April 2004, nine men have been arrested, including one in Aiken County on Nov. 2. One already has pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years in prison.
South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster vows that more people will find themselves behind bars if they solicit sex from minors over the Web.
It's easier these days for Mr. McMaster to make such a pledge. Under the state's new law, which some say might be the toughest in the country, an alleged Internet predator doesn't actually have to show up somewhere to follow through with the crime.
When he embarked on his campaign for office, Mr. McMaster rallied support for a tougher law, one that wouldn't require a face-to-face meeting to snag an arrest.
The first day it went into effect, Donald Louis Brink, of Charlotte, N.C., was nabbed. He recently pleaded guilty, and Mr. McMaster has been praising the law's success with each subsequent arrest.
No other state in the country is known to have a law as tough as South Carolina's, the attorney general said.
Mr. McMaster also has championed the Internet Crimes Against Children task force, a national coalition of law agencies that focuses on Web predators and child pornography.
South Carolina and several police agencies within the state - including the Aiken County Sheriff's Office and Aiken Department of Public Safety - are part of that task force, forming a web of cyber-cops conducting stings over the Internet to apprehend sexual predators.
But there might be pitfalls to the law, and ultimately it will be challenged in court, one legal expert predicts.
The law goes too far in giving South Carolina authorities the power to arrest people just for suggesting sex, said Jack King, the public affairs director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
"Without that face-to-face meeting to prove that the solicitation was genuine and therefore a criminal act, it'll be difficult to prove," Mr. King said.
According to news reports from other states, dozens of defendants are claiming entrapment from police stings operating under similar, yet less stringent, laws.
In one case, Mark Poehlman's conviction in California was overturned in 2000, after an appeals court found that he'd been lured and manipulated by an undercover agent building the case against him. It was entrapment, the three-judge panel ruled.
In another case, a Kansas City judge ruled that Jan Helder was not guilty of trying to have sex with a child because the person he was talking to on the Internet was an undercover officer.
Mr. King said a similar law in Maryland was successfully challenged recently - and a conviction overturned - because that state's code didn't say the suspect had to believe the person he or she was talking to was a minor.
So at the time, talking to a police officer pretending to be a teenager was not a crime, he said.
South Carolina's law does address that, which Mr. King found impressive.
Still, he called it a "terrible law" plagued with problems.
Not only could it present problems for prosecutors who will have to prove that the person arrested intended to follow up on the solicitations, but defendants also could argue First Amendment violations, that they were arrested for a "thought crime," the attorney said.
No one should be arrested for making an "off-color comment" to someone under age, he said.
To him, it's just a matter of time before someone challenges the law's constitutionality.
"I guess there just isn't much crime in South Carolina if they have to find work for all those cops," Mr. King said.
Mr. McMaster stood by the law, calling it a "likely defense" if a suspect argues entrapment.
Sexual predators all over the country are using the Internet with the intention of having "graphic and sexual conversations with children" that will lead to more, he said.
"These predators on the Internet are certainly contemplating everything they do," he said.
Reach Sandi Martin at (803) 648-1395, ext. 111, or sandi.martin@augustachronicle.com.
Tougher Law
The Law: The Child Internet Predator Law makes
it a felony to stalk, lure or entice a child for abduction or sexual
assault.
How it's different: Unlike the state's previous law, this one
lets law enforcement arrest people for soliciting sex from a minor over the
Internet without that person showing up at a pre-arranged
meeting.
Effectiveness: Nine men have been arrested and charged with
criminal solicitation of a minor since the law went into effect in April
2004.