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The Sheriff’s Office publishes a list of everyone booked into the Travis County Jail, and I’ve been watching it over the last week or so to keep track of the new policy of housing Immigration (ICE) in the jail. The numbers of folks listed under ‘INS Detainer’ has certainly increased exponentially.

But today I noticed that there were over thirty arrests for prostitution this weekend, and while I don’t look at the list regularly, much less keep detailed statistics,  I’m pretty sure that means there was a john sting operation.

This must mean that the Austin Police Department spent a ton of your money, dressing an undercover officer up as a hooker, and sent her out to solicit sex from ‘johns,’ that is to say, men looking for prostitutes. Or maybe they were stopped at a light because it was red, and had no intention of doing anything but passing through, until they were propositioned by a cop.

It used to be that I’d see these things publicized in the local paper – not the names of the arrestees, but the fact that the police department had run a sting, and how proud they were that they had arrested so many people, etc. But I’ve searched Google News and the Austin American Statesman, and I can’t find a press release or anything.

Hey, if you guys aren’t going to brag about this, is that some sort of indication that you think public support for these stings is waning? And if so, any chance you could use our money on something more useful?

Also See:

• Are Prostitution Stings Entrapment?
• Definition of Prostitution

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The short answer is “no”.

Prostitution stings (aka john stings) involve female officers dressing up as call girls/hookers, hanging out in high crime areas, and approaching men (usually in cars), and asking them if they “want a date”. The conversations proceed from there, often with the undercover officer being the first one to actually raise the prospect of exchanging sex for money (which is the legal definition of prostitution in Texas).

Austin Police Department runs these sorts of sting operations several times a year. Well, if you’re arrested in this sort of operation, can your lawyer successfully argue entrapment?

Probably not. Through caselaw, the definition of entrapment in Texas includes not only inducement or persuasion by the officer to commit the crime. It also must be of such a nature that the ordinary law abiding citizen would have been induced or persuaded to commit it.

Thus, at jury trial, if the defense were even successful in having an entrapment charge submitted to the jury, the prosecutor can simply argue this: “Find this defendant not guilty, if you too, the jury members would have agreed to have sex with this undercover officer for money.” That’s a pretty high standard to get a juror to agree with (at least back in the jury room with the other members).

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§ 8.06. ENTRAPMENT. 

(a) It is a defense to prosecution that the actor engaged in the conduct charged because he was induced to do so by a law enforcement agent using persuasion or other means likely to cause persons to commit the offense.  Conduct merely affording a person an opportunity to commit an offense does not constitute entrapment.

(b)  In this section "law enforcement agent" includes personnel of the state and local law enforcement agencies as well as of the United States and any person acting in accordance with instructions from such agents.

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