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By TERRIE MORGAN-BESECKER tmorgan@leader.net
Tuesday, January 25, 2000 Page: 3A
WILKES-BARRE – A jury acquitted a Texas man on one charge and deadlocked on
two others Monday in a trial that is believed to be the first case to test
Pennsylvania’s Internet stalking law.
Shawn Freeman, 34, of Brownwood, Texas, was charged with stalking a McAdoo
teenager he met through an Internet chat room in January 1999. Police said
Freeman traveled to Pennsylvania in June and began following the 13-year-old
girl throughout the Hazleton area.
A Luzerne County jury deliberated for about seven hours over two days
before acquitting Freeman of harassment and stalking, and deadlocking on
charges of unlawful communication with a minor and corruption of a minor.
Assistant District Attorney Paula Radick said she must discuss the case
with District Attorney David Lupas, but she expects Freeman will be retried on
the charges in which no verdicts were reached.
Freeman also faces unrelated charges in Brownwood for allegedly having sex
with a 15-year-old girl, said Brown County Chief Deputy Sheriff Martin Scott.
Scott said the girl was a foster child living in the home of Freeman’s
parents. She agreed to have sex with Freeman, but her age made the act a
sexual assault, Scott said.
In the Luzerne County case, Freeman’s attorney, Nandakumar Palissery, said
the heart of the prosecution’s case focuses on the unlawful communication
charge.
The law, enacted in 1998, makes it illegal for an adult to communicate with
a minor if the communication is designed to entice the minor into
participating in certain unlawful sexual acts, Palissery said.
In Freeman’s case, prosecutors alleged he told the girl he was 17 and
engaged in illicit sexual conversations with her over the Internet. Palissery
said police maintained he violated the communications law because Freeman was
enticing the girl to participate in a statutory sexual assault.
Freeman never had sexual contact with the girl, Palissery said. He was
arrested in August after the girl complained he was harassing and following
her.
Palissery said he believes the unlawful communication charge against
Freeman was the first to be filed in the state. The law was so new, he said,
that there were no standard instructions on how to interpret the law for the
judge to give the jury.
Palissery maintained Freeman was not guilty of unlawful communication
because prosecutors could not prove he knew the girl was a minor when he was
communicating with her on the Internet – a required element of the charge.
“When you are discussing a topic in a chat room, there is no way to verify
someone’s identity, age, sex, location or any other information about that
person,” Palissery said. “Even if she had told him (her age), there is no
way for him to verify that.”
Palissery argued Freeman was not guilty of harassment and stalking because
the girl told him she was going to be at each of the places he is alleged to
have stalked her.