Dear Jon:
A good friend of mine was one of the unfortunate guys that was caught up in that ridiculous sting operation that the 23rd Police District was conducting last summer at the bird sanctuary at Montrose. You know, the one where the cops were arresting guys for allegedly having sex in the park?

He is too mortified to even write to you about this and he was so embarrassed that he just pled guilty to get it over with. His lawyer was his sister's real estate attorney. Can he now appeal? Will this be on his record? And wasn't that entrapment?

Steven, Lakeview

Dear Steven:
I'm glad you brought this up. For those of you who don't know, the Bird Sanctuary at Montrose Harbor has long been rumored as a cruising spot for gay men. It is a heavily wooded area (no pun intended) which provides a great deal of privacy and seclusion. And on occasion people have been known to engage in a sex act or two.

Last summer, the 23rd Police District decided it was a priority and assigned as many as 8 officers to the team who conducted sting operations at the park. They had two officers posing as gay men cruising in the park. My law firm handled many of these cases and I can tell you that there was testimony at trial that the officers engaged in provocative sexual conduct and when someone would approach and express interest, they would be arrested and charged with public indecency.

In answer to your question, one has thirty days to withdraw a plea of guilty. So the answer depends upon when he pled guilty. However, assuming he has no other criminal record, and assuming his sentence was one of supervision, he can petition the court for expungement of his criminal record. That means he can ask the court to erase this incident from his record in full-as if it never happened. The police will send to him all the paperwork, including his fingerprints.

The question as to whether this is entrapment is a more difficult one. Entrapment is defense that is used on TV a whole lot more than in real life. It is what we call an affirmative defense in that the defendant has the burden of proof to show that he was induced to the conduct by the officer. And the defense is not available to the defendant if he had a pre-disposition to commit the offense and the officer merely provided the opportunity. One could certainly make a very strong argument that the arrestees in these scenarios were entrapped.

By the way, Webster's Dictionary calls a sanctuary "a place givingimmunity from arrest."

--Jon