Illinois man, 41, found guilty in Internet sex case

Lawyer planning appeal; task force on Web crimes gets first conviction

By Kevin Murphy
Special to the Journal Sentinel

Last Updated: Oct. 4, 1999

Madison - An Illinois man was convicted Monday of attempted child enticement, the first conviction obtained by Wisconsin's new task force on Internet crimes, officials said.

Leonard E. McMillion, 41, of Belleville, Ill., was convicted of traveling to Madison in May to have sex with someone he believed was a 14-year-old girl he had met in an Internet chat room. Instead, "Betsy," whom McMillion had been chatting with, was actually a state investigator who was working on a federally funded task force to reduce and prevent Internet crimes against children.

McMillion was arrested upon arrival at the Dane County Regional Airport.

Although McMillion was convicted in Dane County Circuit Court after pleading no contest to the charge, he will appeal it on grounds that his actions did not constitute a crime, his attorney said.

"This is a virtual crime . . . and since there was no actual victim, there wasn't a crime committed," said David Relles, McMillion's attorney.

Relles said his client was conversing with an adult man and even if McMillion carried out what he intended to do, no child would have been involved and no law would have been broken.

Relles' argument is called the "legal impossibility theory," and it failed to persuade Circuit Judge Mark Frankel to drop the charges against McMillion this summer.

Circuit Judge Dan Moeser, who found McMillion guilty Monday, said the state had made a sufficient case to prove McMillion attempted child enticement.

Assistant Attorney General Alan Kesner, who prosecuted the case, said crimes do occur without actual victims, and McMillion's case was the same as other sting prosecutions except it involved the Internet.

"This is not unlike a drug case where an undercover police officer is used to buy drugs, even though he has no intent to use them. Those cases show there was a propensity to sell drugs on the defendant's part," Kesner said after court.

McMillion's case involves the law of attempt, which means a person does not have to complete a crime in order to have completed one, said University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School professor Frank Tuerkheimer.

"This case demonstrates the wisdom of that. The alternative is to catch them really doing these things, or to arrange for a minor to get directly involved in this," he said. "And then there still wouldn't be a crime committed under their theory because she would be surrounded by 15 agents anyway."

In exchange for McMillion's not contesting the attempted enticement charge, the state dismissed two counts of attempting to transmit sexual materials to a minor. Moeser continued McMillion's release on bail until his sentencing to be scheduled within 30 days.

In the past six months, the Wisconsin Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force has arrested six people on attempted enticement charges and made five arrests for attempting to distribute pornography to children.