State v. Dickerson
| Citation | 511 P.3d 1191 |
| Decision Date | 05 May 2022 |
| Docket Number | 20191052-CA |
| Parties | STATE of Utah, Appellant, v. Timothy Lavell DICKERSON, Appellee. |
| Court | Court of Appeals of Utah |
Sean D. Reyes and David A. Simpson, Attorneys for Appellant
Douglas J. Thompson, Attorney for Appellee
Opinion
¶1 After being charged with enticement of a minor, attempted sodomy on a child, and various drug-related offenses, Timothy Lavell Dickerson moved to dismiss the charges, claiming that a law enforcement officer had entrapped him into committing the offenses. The district court denied his motion as to the drug charges but granted it as to the enticement and sodomy charges. The State now appeals. We reverse and remand for further proceedings.
¶2 The Utah Attorney General's Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force "fight[s] the sexual exploitation of children online." In May 2019, an ICAC special agent was using an online persona he had created to pose as a thirteen-year-old girl on various platforms. The agent explained that, because on "a lot of these platforms you have to put your age as eighteen," he would do so and then, "once a conversation engages or starts," he would "reveal [the girl's] real age" as thirteen.
¶3 When he encountered Dickerson, the special agent was using the alias "Kailey" on a dating app. The agent created a profile for Kailey using the profile name "kaileyjojo." The profile listed Kailey's age as eighteen and included a "closeup, selfie-type picture" of a West Valley City police officer who was in her twenties. Besides closely cropping the photo, the agent did not alter it in any way. The district court later found that the female in the profile photo "appear[ed] to be at least 18 years of age, if not older."
¶4 Dickerson contacted Kailey using the profile name "Lavell." Users of the dating app could contact each other by "clicking on a person's page and then initiating" a "direct chat" from there. After the initial contact, the following exchange occurred:
The agent testified that Dickerson then "asked for my number, and I gave it to him, and it led on to text messaging."1
¶5 Over text messages, Dickerson suggested that they meet up and smoke some marijuana and asked Kailey, "wat else can we do baby"? Kailey's responses were hesitant, claiming that she had "never really snuckout" before. Kailey told Dickerson she was "kinda scared" because "i dont know what u wanna do" and "ive never been with a oldr guy." Dickerson asked, After Kailey replied that the oldest "was 13 in my grade," Dickerson again asked for the address.
¶6 Kailey told Dickerson that her "bff has a older boyfriend and she likes it." Dickerson replied, "O she do huh and you will like it too baby." He continued to press Kailey for the address. When Kailey asked, "r u gonna try stuff with me after we smoke? lol," Dickerson asked, "Do u want me to baby"? He assured her that they could do "Wateva u want baby" and "you will like it too baby."
¶7 Kailey suggested that they meet up the next day, but Dickerson pleaded, "Awwwww baby y ... I wanted to Tonite please." Kailey said that she was just nervous, prompting the following exchange:
¶8 Kailey gave Dickerson the address of a gas station next to an apartment complex and said she would meet him there. The two continued to exchange text messages while Dickerson was en route. Dickerson repeatedly asked Kailey to send him a picture of herself. When he asked what she was wearing, Kailey replied that she was in a "[p]ink shirt and jeans," leading to the following exchange:
¶9 When Dickerson arrived at the designated meeting place, the agent was "able to confirm [Dickerson's] identity when [he] saw him as the person that [he] had been chatting with." Authorities arrested Dickerson. A search of his car uncovered drug paraphernalia and a "new pack of condoms."
¶10 Dickerson was charged with three sexual offenses—one count of enticing a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity and two counts of attempted sodomy upon a child—and two drug offenses—possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute. Dickerson subsequently filed a motion to dismiss under Utah Code section 76-2-303(5), alleging that the agent had entrapped him into committing the offenses.
¶11 After a hearing, the district court granted Dickerson's motion as to the sex offenses but denied it as to the drug counts. In its written ruling, the district court explained that although Utah had abandoned a subjective standard of entrapment and adopted an objective standard, "over time subjective reasoning crept back into" Utah's appellate decisions. In particular, the district court believed that it violated the objective test "to consider the impact of police inducement on the particular defendant." Instead, the court believed it was limited to assessing "the impact of the inducement on a reasonable person under the circumstances of the particular case."
¶12 Applying that standard, the court concluded "that the methods used by the [a]gent in this case created a substantial risk that the charged sex offenses would be committed by someone not otherwise ready to commit them." In reaching that conclusion, the court relied "on the compounding impact of three decisions by the [a]gent—the decision to adult-certify Kailey on [the dating app], the decision to post a picture of an adult woman on Kailey's [dating app] profile, and the decision to first direct the text messaging toward overtly sexual topics." Because the court concluded that Dickerson was entrapped, it dismissed the enticement and sodomy counts. The State...
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State v. Smith
...deny" a defendant's motion to dismiss "and allow the issue of entrapment to go to the jury." State v. Dickerson , 2022 UT App 56, ¶ 21, 511 P.3d 1191 (quotation simplified). In our view, the district court correctly concluded that this case was not one of those exceptional cases in which en......
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Race, Entrapment, and Manufacturing 'Homegrown Terrorism
...Compare State v. Hernandez, 462 P.3d 1283, 1286– 87 (Utah Ct. App. 2020) (claiming to follow an objective test), with State v. Dickerson, 511 P.3d 1191, 1201 (Utah Ct. App. 2022) (recognizing subjective aspects). See also, e.g. , State v. Agrabante, 830 P.2d 492, 499 (Haw. 1992) (claiming t......