So an undercover cop or deputy was staking out a park, played a gay guy into possibly hooking up and then, he was arrested.
But for what? No money was exchanged, no public sex happened, so why was the guy arrested? Well, he was arrested due to a piece of Louisiana’s anti-sodomy law which is dead and inactive. How can they do that? The sad thing is they have been doing this for about 2 years now.
Here's more:
District Attorney Hillar Moore III said his office refused to prosecute each one of the cases because his assistants found no crime had occurred. After inquiries from the newspaper last week, he arranged to meet with Sheriff’s Office investigators to discuss the implications of the Supreme Court ruling.This crap needs to stop. It feels like they are purposely looking to arrest gays.
Casey Rayborn Hicks, a Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, denied that investigators had been misapplying the anti-sodomy law, which remains among the state’s criminal statutes.
“This is a law that is currently on the Louisiana books, and the sheriff is charged with enforcing the laws passed by our Louisiana Legislature,” Hicks said. “Whether the law is valid is something for the courts to determine, but the sheriff will enforce the laws that are enacted.”
Moore noted that public sex acts and the solicitation of “unnatural carnal copulation” for money remain illegal. But those elements were lacking from these 12 cases, and most of the men were arrested after agreeing to have sex away from the park at a private residence.
“The Sheriff’s Office’s intentions are all good,” Moore said. “But from what I’ve seen of these cases, legally, we found no criminal violation.”
Advocates for civil rights and the LGBT community expressed outrage last week, saying the task force unfairly targeted gay men who were humiliated by their arrests. “It is frustrating that the police are using their resources to pursue issues like this and arrest people for attempting to pick someone up and go home with them,” said Bruce Parker, of Equality Louisiana. “It’s perfectly legal, and we would have to close down every bar in Baton Rouge if that weren’t the case.”
source
There is often a wide disconnect between police agencies, prosecutor and the judiciary.
ReplyDeleteI recall when I worked at the state AG's office back in '01. We'd constantly get fingerprint cards from the city of Providence for a charge of Failure to Move. It's in essence our version of buzz off. But the thing was under the STATE universal charge code, the charge didn't exist.
So we'd just kick the cards back to them.
Did we just go back in time, I feel like I am in the 50's.
ReplyDelete