Dateline NBC's To Catch a Predator captured a huge national audience with its sting operations that lured dozens of would-be predators underneath the bright camera lights to be skillfully lambasted by Chris Hansen. There was a morbid fascination to it. A disbelief viewers shared with Hansen, who often said I can't believe how many of these guys actually show up?!
Virginia's "Internet Solicitation" law, however, focuses less on the venturing predators like the ones grilled by Hansen on the popular show, but on irresponsible internet surfers who say reprehensible things to teenagers but never choose to leave their homes. The devil in the cyber age, it seems, is in the chatting. Why though, is talking about something on the internet worse than doing it? 
The extraordinary focus on internet chatters can also lead to strange legal anomalies. For example, an eighteen year old may carry on a sexual relationship with her seventeen year old boyfriend without risking prison. But if the same young woman proposes the same sex act to the same boyfriend via e-mail she has committed a serious felony – and could face up to ten years in prison and years of sex offender registration. See Va. Code 18.2-374.3 section E. (Suggestion of consensual sex via e-mail is Class 5 felony even if offender 18 and "victim" 17).
Another nonsensical result of the internet predator craze is that Virginia punishes internet activity substantially more than in-person activity in many cases. Virginia Code section 18.2-370 criminalizes the proposal, by an adult to a minor, of almost any sexual act, including indecent exposure.[1] The penalty for proposing a sexual act to a person under 15 ranges from zero to ten years in the penitentiary.[2] Thus, an adult’s sentenced for proposing sex to a minor in person can be decided by a court after consideration of a pre-sentence report, victim impact testimony, the Virginia Sentencing guidelines, the defendant’s record, the precise nature of the offense, the risk of re-offense, and other appropriate factors. Such a defendant could receive probation, or any sentence up to ten years in prison. On the other hand, if the same defendant made the same proposal not in person, but over the internet, he or she would be subject to a five year mandatory minimum sentence.[3] (It is no defense to “internet solicitation” that the “minor” is actually a detective. Under the in-person proposal (indecent liberties) statute, the victim must be an actual minor.) Each subsequent offense triggers a ten year mandatory minimum. Thus, unlike an in-person offender, an internet offender who never leaves or plans to leave his or her home must serve five years, and then ten years for each subsequent offense. Such an offender can rack up multiple offenses in one computer session, effectively earning a sentence of life in prison for repeatedly suggesting sex acts to a detective posing as a minor. To be sure, e-mailing with a minor about sex should be criminalized. But the hysteria over internet predators has led to a situation where strict mandatory minimums apply to depraved internet chatters but not to in-person offenders.[4] For some reason, Virginia has seen fit to treat the "internet only" offense, and not the in-person offense, as one requring substantial prison in each and every case. The effect of punishing internet offenders more than live offenders is magnified further by the number of times a trained detective posing as a minor on the internet can get a perverse chatter to repeat the offending solicitous language, each time triggering another mandatory minimum. (See Booker v. Virginia, 41 Va. App. 609 (2003)( allowing multiple convictions (and mandatory minimums) for each technical incident of internet solicitation between the same defendant and same undercover detective.)
Internet sting operations targeting hands-on predators, like the ones on To Catch a Predator lure people out of their homes who are inclined to seek sex with a minor. The Virginia internet solicitation statute, however, targets the harsh mandatory minimums at those who speak but never act, or never even plan to act. This privileges skillful police chatting techniques designed to get the target to say certain things as opposed to determining whether the person on the other end of the chat has any proclivity to be a real predator. The "internet only" statute captures a boad range of offenders - not just potential predators, but also role players and mentally challenged internet addicts grateful for any interaction at all. All reprehensible, but in so many different degrees. And none so much as a live predator.
[1]http://leg1.state.va.us/000/cod/18.2-370.HTM (Indecent Liberties Statute); http://leg1.state.va.us/000/cod/18.2-361.HTM ( Crimes Against Nature Statute, which is incorporated in Indecent Liberties Statute).
[3]http://law.justia.com/virginia/codes/toc1802000/18.2-374.3.html (Internet Solicitation statute. Uses same language as Indecent Liberties Statute, only difference is proposal made by computer. Five year mandatory minimum applies if seven year age difference between offender and the alleged minor.)
[4] Internet solicitation, even absent an attempt to meet a juvenile in person, carries heavy mandatory sentences. But serious hands-on offenses like rape, carnal knowledge of a minor, forcible sodomy, and sexual battery of a minor do not carry mandatory minimum sentences at all.
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