Pedophile Suspect Death $100M Suit Against NBC’s ‘Dateline’ to Proceed

February 29, 2008

  • February 29, 2008 at 7:02 am
    Jason S says:
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    If you have seen the show, it is online chat logs, not email that is collected as evidence. There are chat rooms that are frequented by pedophiles. Perverted Justice monitors the chat rooms, and poses as underage children. Someone contacted NBC, possibly Perverted Justice, and stated that there are adults propositioning children with sex in these chat rooms and nothing is being done about it. Many local enforcement outfits are not technologically savvy, and the FBI doesn’t usually get involved unless the crime crosses state lines. I guess someone wondered whether there was a story in whether these perverts would follow through with their chat and actually show up at the house to meet the child. Dateline thought it would be interesting to interview these people and ask them “what was going through your mind before you came here?”

    Law enforcement was not originally involved, as it was originally an attempt to figure out why an adult would just show up at a teen’s home with condoms or alcohol that they had just met in a chat room. There was a lot of public outrage after the initial episodes that the people were just allowed to leave after being confronted, and law enforcement asked to be part of the process. The people that are convicted are usually charged with soliciting to have sex with a minor, not actual sex contact.

    I also believe that the person involved with this case was never convicted of anything because he killed himself before any trial. I don’t believe the court was going to try him after his death. He could have fought the charges, but I guess he didn’t choose to.

  • February 29, 2008 at 7:41 am
    sandra says:
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    You know, just because of this guys status, a lawsuit is being entertained. What about all of those other sick sobs that prey on our children through the internet – maybe they should all sue too for defamation of character etc. That guy’s guilt or shame from being CAUGHT was what prompted his suicide. Those pedophiles on that show deserve each and everything that comes to them.

  • February 29, 2008 at 7:45 am
    Joe says:
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    I watched the special. I’m convinced by the evidence that was presented that the man was probably guilty. I think that he saw the case was indefensible, and took the only easy way out. Of course, he may not have been guilty and just thought that whether or not the case was proved, the accusation and publicity would be enough to wreck his life, we’ll never know. What I do see now, is the usual wrongful death ******** I see every time we work a fatality. Folks we’re all going to die. I hate to remind you, but it’s on our planners, albeit with a “tentative” date. For whatever reason, the man decided to pick his own date and circumstances, and no, NBC, The Police Dept, Dr Ruth, no one but he himself pulled the trigger.
    Was he a pedophile ? I don’t know, but he is square with the house now, whether he was guilty and avoiding punishment, or innocent and unwilling to trust himself to the system he was a part of, he is dead, and whatever he did or didn’t do is between him and his God, and giving someone a lot of money is not going to change anything.

  • February 29, 2008 at 8:42 am
    Dustin says:
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    I would tend to agree with you, but I read a very good article on this whole debacle in Esquire a few months ago. The issue here is that NBC clearly interjected into the police aspect of things and really caused the inexperienced police men that were on the case and helping out to push forward. From what I understand when they found out he was a lawyer they were like, “I don’t care what happens, we have to get this guy on camera.” When he stopped talking to the decoy and refused to setup a meeting (the whole premise to the show is the perp comes to the decoy house for a meeting), CBS went out to him with a rushed warrent instead of letting the law work it out. While I certainly have no sympathy for a pedophile as I feel they deserve none, this was a unique case. I would say that NBC acted wrecklessly to obtain a story for ratings, and this resulted in a man’s death. He did not commit suicide until they got to the house. While his guilt played a part, I would say that NBC’s wrecklessness was the proximate cause of his suicide. I am sure I will be blasted as having sympathy for a pedophile, but I don’t. I do however feel that CBS crossed a line.

  • February 29, 2008 at 8:50 am
    Anon says:
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    Isn’t it funny that the show that catches Internet predators by pretending to be teenage girls at home alone is called “Dateline”?

  • February 29, 2008 at 11:13 am
    lastbat says:
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    Dustin, I read similar articles and drew much the same conclusions. Normally you don’t have a full SWAT team go in after somebody who is not considered to be armed and dangerous. Normally you would send out a couple officers and do it as quietly as possible.

    I’m going to get blasted for the rest of this. I wish to preface that I believe killing is too good for sexual predators of any age or gender, but killing is the best I think we can do (even though we don’t).

    He was a SUSPECTED pedophile. I have a big problem with releasing the names of suspects in sexual crimes while hiding the alleged victim. There are too many cases, high profile cases (remember Duke University anyone?), of false accusation of sex crimes. Even if proven guilty the accused’s life is forever damaged and it is extremely rare for the accuser to be tried – even though false accusation is a felony. The suspects and the victims should be out of the spotlight unless and until proven guilty. If the suspect is proven guilty, paste their face across the nation and then kill them. If the suspect is proven innocent, hide them forever and paste the name of the accuser across the nation, then lock them up.

    I have no sympathy for those that prey on others, but I do have sympathy for those whose lives are ruined needlessly. I’m surprised there haven’t been more suicides due to the “To Catch a Predator” series. I think the only reason we haven’t seen them before is because they normally only air the ones that show up to the house and it’s hard to blow your brains out when you have four cops sitting on you. I’m not a fan of lawsuits, but I hope they win this one because we need to change how we do business.

  • February 29, 2008 at 11:37 am
    lastbat says:
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    I normally don’t cross-post articles, but after my last posting I found this:

    http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1204212428181&pos=ataglance

    Accuser in Jason Kidd Sexual Battery Case Loses Her Bid for Anonymity
    Noeleen G. Walder
    New York Law Journal
    February 29, 2008

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    An aspiring model’s request to keep her identity under wraps in a sexual battery suit she filed against basketball star Jason Kidd has been denied by a Manhattan judge.

    The woman’s desire to avoid “embarrassment” is a “plainly insufficient” ground for invoking New York Civil Rights Law 50-b, which protects the privacy of alleged sexual offense victims, New York State Supreme Court Justice Carol Edmead held in Jane Doe v. Jason Kidd, 116541-07.

    Using fictitious names “runs afoul” of the public’s right of access to judicial proceedings, and anonymity should be restricted to situations where a plaintiff faces a “risk of retaliatory physical or mental harm,” the judge said.

    She noted that Kidd was not charged with a crime, and that the woman’s representatives have themselves sensationalized her case by speaking to the press and “openly” disparaging Kidd.

    “[P]laintiff’s voluntary identification of a … famous basketball player, in her pleadings, and to the press, undermines” her purported need for anonymity, the court ruled.

    Kidd allegedly encountered the 23-year-old woman on Oct. 10, 2007, at Tenjune, a nightclub on Little W. 12th Street in the Meatpacking District of Manhattan.

    According to the decision, the woman accused Kidd of grabbing her buttocks and “crotch.”

    The October incident came just three months before Kidd’s rocky personal life attracted widespread media attention when he filed a restraining order against his estranged wife.

    His career also has been in flux. Less than two weeks ago, he was traded from the New Jersey Nets to his original draft team, the Dallas Mavericks.

    Following the nightclub encounter, the alleged victim filed suit, claiming Kidd acted “reckless[ly]” and caused her to reasonably fear that she would suffer “immediately harmful or offensive contact.” The woman also maintained that the alleged battery caused her ongoing physical and mental damage, which has interfered with her employment and other activities.

    The plaintiff argued that she should be permitted to bring the suit anonymously under New York Civil Rights Law §50-b, which prevents the “public inspection” of court files, photographs and other documents “that name a victim of a sexual offense.”

    Edmead disagreed. While legislative history generally only is used to resolve “ambiguous” statutory language, “in this case, the intent of the framers … is critical as to the intended covered individuals,” the judge noted.

    Section 50-b “serves two important purposes,” the judge wrote: to shield victims from the embarrassment of media coverage and to “encourage victims to cooperate in the criminal prosecution of sexual offenses.”

    PRESUMPTION OF OPENNESS

    Here, however, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has declined to prosecute Kidd for his conduct, and “the scale tips in favor of disclosure” in weighing the alleged victim’s right to privacy against the “constitutionally-embedded presumption of openness in judicial proceedings,” Edmead said.

    This presumption guards against the potential for “injustice, incompetence, perjury and fraud,” she added.

    Since the use of “fictitious names … run[s] afoul of the public’s common law right of access to judicial proceedings,” a plaintiff wishing to remain anonymous must show that a “substantial” privacy interest exists, Edmead wrote.

    When considering requests to remain anonymous, a court should be guided by whether a party simply wants to “avoid the annoyance and criticism that may attend any litigation or to preserve privacy in a matter of a sensitive and highly personal nature” and if identification would result in “physical or mental harm” to the party or others, the judge wrote. James v. Jacobson, 6 F3d 233 (4th Cir. 1993).

    “Embarrassment is plainly insufficient” to justify a request to withhold a litigant’s identity, the court held.

    “Instead, anonymity should be limited to ‘compelling situations’ involving ‘highly sensitive matters’ including ‘social stigmatization'” or where a “‘real danger of physical harm'” exists, the judge observed.

    While the judge said she was “loath to weigh degrees of violation” and did not intend to make light of the allegations, the case law and legislative history of §50-b militated against keeping the plaintiff anonymous.

    She ordered the alleged victim to amend her complaint, replacing “Jane Doe” with her real name, and scheduled a preliminary conference for April 8, 2008.

    Russell S. Adler, of the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., firm Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler, who represented the plaintiff, did not return calls for comment.

    Paul R. Grand and Jerrold L. Steigman, of Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, Anello & Bohrer, serve as counsel for Kidd.

    “The court’s decision is further indication that Jason Kidd did not do anything wrong,” Grand said in a statement.

  • February 29, 2008 at 12:01 pm
    Dustin says:
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    Yeah, don’t even get me started on the Duke case. That case was so botched. It is sad that people’s lives are ruined by FALSE accusations. If they are guilty, throw away the key.

    On the Dateline Predator show: This from the Esquire article (which I strongly recommend reading, if you haven’t Lastbat) the Murphy detective alleges that Chris Hansen or someone from Dateline called and demanded that the search warrent be issued. Chris also denied that any of the crew was on the personal property of Conrad (such would have been illegal), but they later recanted when Esquire was able to describe what “Frag” one of the crewmen looked like standing beside Conradt’s door! Dateline also told the law officials they had seen a Sunday paper disappear from the front steps (which then prompted them to call in SWAT for tactical entry). Hansen would also deny this and say they did no survelience for the policy. Everything about this whole incident stinks of ratings chasing at the cost of human life. Sad….

  • February 29, 2008 at 1:44 am
    Watcher says:
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    This is entertainment folks, buy our sponsors’ products!

  • February 29, 2008 at 1:50 am
    Carol says:
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    What is all the hullabaloo about – this guy is no loss to society. If he wasn’t guilty, he certainly wouldn’t have committed suicide. He saved the courts some money – now his sister is going to waste the money again!



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