Troy A. Lewis of Silver Spring was dabbling in legalese in an Internet chat when he wrote he was only fantasizing about an illicit encounter with a minor, an assistant U.S. attorney argued today in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
The prosecutor, Leslie Ann Gerardo, accused Lewis of intentionally mixing fantasy into the online conversation in order to minimize his criminal exposure in the event he was caught trying to arrange sex with a minor.
“This was no fantasy. This was an attempt to hide behind fantasy in case he got caught,” Gerardo argued. Lewis, indeed, was arrested in the District when he showed up at a bar to meet a man with whom he’d been chatting online. The man—an undercover D.C. police officer—promised he could introduce Lewis to a minor. Lewis, found guilty at trial, is serving a nearly 13-year prison sentence for attempted coercion of a minor and traveling with intent to engage in sex with a minor.
His court-appointed defense attorney, D.C. solo practitioner Jenifer Wicks, argued that Lewis, 39, never had any intention to engage in an unlawful tryst and that there was no evidence Lewis’ computer was ever hooked up to the Internet in his home. “It can be a fantasy, and that fantasy is not against the law,” Wicks argued.
Chief Judge David Sentelle and Judges A. Raymond Randolph and Janice Rogers Brown didn’t have a single question for Gerardo. But the judges grilled Wicks. Circumstantial evidence, Sentelle and Randolph said, suggests Lewis was on the Internet in his home (his computer was seized there) and that he traveled from Maryland to D.C. to arrange an illicit encounter with a minor. "Why isn't that enough?" Randolph asked.
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