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Bad Laws. In this section we will post new anti-prostitution laws and enforcement techniques of the government. If you know of any such enforcement in your state, please notify us immediately, send us newsclippings or tell us where you saw an article which mentions the law or its' enforcement. If you have been the victim of a sting, and want us to post it here, please send us a copy of your arrest report, etc. (Click here for California Bad Laws)
(sent in by Fred Cherry, Brooklyn, NY)
by Pete Donohue, Daily News Staff Writer
A former cop was convicted yesterday of shooting and paralyzing a Queens prostitute who mocked him after he failed to perform sexually.
Rolando Hernandez, who shot the woman eight days after graduating from the Police Academy, clutched a small Bible as the jury foreman declared him guilty of attempted murder, assault and tampering with evidence.
Hernandez, 25, faces up to 25 years in prison when sentenced next month by Justice Richard Buchter.
But the woman he paralyzed, 28-year-old Gayle Hoffman, said Hernandez "deserves to have his arms and legs handcuffed for a month or so, so he can see what it feels like."
"He can feed himself, he can clothe himself," said Hoffman in a telephone interview from a long-term care facility in Queens. "He doesn't know what it really feels like ot be a prisoner. I'm a prisoner in my own body."
Assistant District Attorney Kenneth Fischer said two lives were ruined by the shooting.
"This younbg woman, who already was leading a sad life as a drug addict supporting herself as a prostitute, is now a quadriplegic," Fischer said. "And this guy in one night threw his life away."
During the trial, the wheelchair-bound woman described how Hernandex shot her with his service revolver in March 1996.
She said they had just left his apartment after the failed sex act and were walking down Beach 29th St. in Far Rockaway.
"I said he couldn't do anything, and I laughed," Hoffman said.
This enraged Hernandez, said Hoffman.
She said he brandished his gun and declared, "You'll never dis anyone like that again."
The first shot sent her sprawling. Four other shots missed the mark.
The former cop and a pal had solicited Hoffman on a Queens street, offering her crack for sex.
Jurors said yesterday that Hoffman seemed credible despite testimony that she smoked crack before the shooting and had abused drugs for 13 years.
Hernandez did not testify.
"We knew she wasn't Cinderella," one juror said.
Hoffman has filed a $75 million civil lawsuit against the city, the Police Department and Hernandez.
by Robert L. Steinback in the Miami Herald 3/21/97
If you're contemplating having extramarital sex, you may want to add a third pillow in your bed - for the state.
In an opinion delivered this month, U.S. District Judge Jose A. Gonzalez Jr. said Florida not only has the right to prohibit prostitution, it can also criminalize fornication, sodomy and cohabitation. Gonzalez denied a former prostitute's bid to overturn the state's laws outlawing sex for hire.
The plaintiff, a former West Palm Beach prostitute, argued that if a woman can legally have an abortion - under the notion that she can do what she wants with her body - then she should be able to sell her body for sex.
Novel argument. And she's right. Peddling one's own flesh might offend many folks' sensibilities - including mine - but if two competent adults choose to do it, I don't see why it's the government's business, or mine.
Despite the plaintiff's good argument, Gonzalez was right to reject the suit. Laws regarding prostitution are the work of the Legislature, not the courts.
Cold cash
Still, there's an element of hypocrisy in prostitution laws. People routinely exchange sex for dinners, nights at the theater, modeling auditions and vacations in Europe - not always quid pro quo, mind you, but you get the idea - without suspicion of criminality. Why does this exchange become illegal when the currency is cold cash, free of any illusions of a relationship?
Gonzalez focused on the potential harm wrought by prostitution - in particular, the harm to marriages (as if only married people pay for sex). It is reasonable for the Legislature to deduce that prostitution "could lead to greater marital strife than mere adultery," Gonzalez said - though it's not clear to me why engaging a prostitute makes infidelity more onerous.
Soliciting a prostitute can indeed harm a marriage. But so can staying out late playing pool with the boys (or the girls). Or working as a police officer, paramedic or some other stressful occupation. Or being overly attached to one's mother. We have no laws against these perils.
It might seem reasonable to consider marriage an exalted state of relationship - but government shouldn't criminalize certain behavior on the arbitrary belief that it is anti-marriage.
In any case, had Gonzalez stopped there, his decision wouldn't have raised many eyebrows. The state has the power to regulate commerce, and to determine what commerce might be harmful to its citizens - I just disagree that prostitution is harmful by definition.
Banning roommates?
But the judge went further. in his opinion, he affirmed that state's power to regulate extramarital sexual behavior between consensual adults even when money is not transacted.
Gonzalez, clearly on a roll, added that the state can even outlaw cohabitation - which involves only the threat of consensual sex. Would the judge uphold an anti-roommate law?
I remain baffled as to how government can claim a right to govern consensual extramarital sex between adults.
Call it blasphemous if you must, but the singular rationale that the Bible or God deems such acts sinful is not enough to justify enforcement by a secular government - even a secular government that recognizes that we the people are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. It's the state's role to outlaw and punish crime - not sin, unless the sin is also criminal.
There is considerable danger in fusing state power with religious orthodoxy. If our government can regulate consensual sex, how different would we be from the Islamic fundamentalist governments of Iran or Iraq that we in the West fear so much?
(WebMaster's note: the full text of the judge's opinion is
available on this site by clicking
here)
By Tim Pallesen - Palm Beach Post Staff Reporter
Storefront sex thrives in Palm Beach Country authorities say, because prostitutes three years ago discovered just how far an undercover detective would go to make an arrest.
"The ladies had learned that the best way to tell this guy was a cop was to tell him to drop his pants," State Attorney Barry Krischer said. "They knew a cop wouldn't do that."
Now, police and prosecutors are excited by a new approach to fight against prostitution, where women who sell sex via massage parlors and escort services face racketeering charges- and no vice agent suffers embarrassment.
Criminal defense lawyers say the new strategy discriminates by gender because male customers who buy sex go unpunished after replacing the undercover vice agents as witnesses.
The new strategy started with Delray Beach vice agents who, working with the state attorney's office arrested alleged madam Teresa Chiappe, 41, and 10 alleged prostitutes July - after taking sworn statements from 20 men as they left a massage parlor.
Each woman faces a possible 30-year prison sentence if convicted of the racketeering charge. The men, most described as wealthy and married, were not charged. Police kept their names secret and if the new strategy works fully, the men won't be embarrassed by testifying in court.
"Delray took a nontraditional approach and it worked," Krischer said. "Now it's appropriate to go back and determine if this can be an effective tool elsewhere."
Krischer has encouraged the sheriff's vice supervisor, Capt. James McGuire, to target businesses that advertise body shampoos and private modeling in Palm Beach County's unincorporated areas.
State prosecutors and sheriff's vice agents have worked together on prostitution investigations since 1993, when the vice agents refused to pose as johns.
"It was something we didn't want to do," McGuire recalled last week. "We were embarrassing our agents and the people of Palm Beach County think we, as vice agents, were violating our personal values." McGuire welcomed an alternative strategy which forces the real johns to testify if prosecutors can't reach plea agreements with some of the alleged prostitutes. But defense attorneys predicted jurors won't convict a prostitutes of a 30-year felony racketeering charge while her johns go unpunished.
"It's an extremely sexist policy where we keep the mens' names secret and only prosecute the women who do "what the men want,"" West Palm Beach attorney James Eisenberg said, calling the new anti-prostitution offensive a sham on the public.
The 20 unidentified johns in the Delray Beach case, who are not charged with a crime, may stay anonymous if Chiappe's co-defendants receive plea deals to testify against her. The men are volunteering as "good citizens" to assist police and prosecutors, vice agent Brady Myers said.
"Did he say that with a straight face?" asked Fred Haddad, the Fort Lauderdale attorney hired to defend Chiappe, accused of being a madam.
Haddad will ask a judge to order Delray Beach vice agents to identify the men so he can discredit their accusations against his client.
"We'll learn who these good citizens are," he said Friday. "Every inducement and motive will be known."
James Green, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney agreed that any investigation that only targets women is discriminatory: "In the past, it was only misdemeanors. Now the women are facing serious felonies."
Krischer likes the strategy because men won't want their families to know they were stopped by police while leaving an illegal massage parlor.
But Randy Berman, chief deputy for the public defender's office, disagreed. "Giving a free pass as far as criminal responsibility is going to send the message to men that if you cooperate, you'll walk," he said.
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