Ohio's law against using the Internet to solicit underage sex got a double victory in Hamilton County June 5. First, a judge upheld the law's constitutionality; then, county prosecutors celebrated again when the judge convicted a former seminarian of trying to have sex with a detective posing as a 14-year-old girl he met on the Internet, the Cincinnati Post reported.
Marc Anthony's defense had been challenging the law's legality, claiming that because the teenager Anthony had solicited was really an adult – Hamilton County Sheriff's Detective Rick Sweeney – the law didn't apply. "There is no need to protect a policeman from other adults," defense attorney Merlyn Shiverdecker told the court.
But prosecutors including Brad Greenberg argued successfully that lawmakers had specific intentions when writing the law, the Post said. "The (words used by the adult were) specifically proffered to incite -- the illegal action of having sex with a minor," Greenberg said.
The June 5 ruling on the law eliminated an earlier ruling by another county judge who had found no victim because no actual minor had been involved in a similar case.
Anthony was convicted of two counts of what Ohio law calls "importuning," sending e-mails and sexual Internet chats with Sweeney who was posing as a 14-year-old girl. At least one of the chats came from Vatican City – where he was studying for the priesthood, police told the Post. He arranged to meet her at a mall to take her to a hotel nearby, the newspaper said, but he ended up getting arrested instead last October 11.
Anthony faces up to two years in prison at his July 2 sentencing. He's being held in county jail until then.
