June 10, 2009 11:03 pm
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By Anne Hershewe
news@joplinglobe.com
A Centralia man’s defense, that he was merely indulging in fantasy during sexually explicit online chats with a sheriff’s detective posing as an underage girl, did not play well with a Jasper County jury.
Jurors deliberated 32 minutes Wednesday before convicting Donald C. Bisans, 48, on all three counts of attempted enticement of a child that were the focus of a two-day trial in Jasper County Circuit Court in Joplin.
Bisans initiated chats on an Internet Web site in late March 2008 with Detective Ed Bailey of the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department. Bailey was posing online as a 13-year-old girl from Sarcoxie named “Candy.”
Bailey testified that during the online contact of about two weeks, Bisans expressed an increasing interest in sexual acts with “Candy,” sent her links to adult pornography Web sites, and talked about how they might meet once her school year had ended.
The defendant was arrested April 10, 2008, after sending “Candy’s” equally fictitious friend “Cindy” $80 in the mail for the purchase of a webcam so that the “girls” could send him video of them performing sex acts on each other.
Assistant Prosecutor Kimberly Fisher sought to prove that Bisans broke Missouri law at least three times during his contact with “Candy.”
Fisher presented evidence that on March 31, 2008, Bisans encouraged “Candy” to engage in sexual contact with her friend “Cindy,” an undercover identity of former Diamond police Chief Jim Murray, who specializes in Internet child-predator crimes and assisted Bailey in his investigation. Bisans again broke the law two days later, Fisher maintained, by suggesting what articles of clothing “Candy” should wear when he met her.
A third violation of the law took place April 7, 2008, the prosecution maintained, when the defendant sent “Cindy” $80 through the mail for the purchase of the Internet camera.
Bisans never took the witness stand in his own defense.
Public defender Charles Oppelt instead cross-examined state witnesses in an effort to show that his client regarded the chats as little more than sexual fantasy. Oppelt maintained that Bisans actually suspected that “Candy” and “Cindy” were not as young as they claimed.
When Bisans at one point talked on the telephone with two adult female decoys recruited by Bailey to pose as the “girls,” he knew they were not teens, Oppelt argued. He said the women who acted as the decoys were simply not credible in their playacting as teens. Nor were Bailey and Murray during their online chats with his client, Oppelt argued.
“Donald knows no 13-year-old girl is going to want to chat with him about sex,” Oppelt told jurors during closing arguments.
Oppelt acknowledged that his client used sexually explicit, even disturbing, language in his chats with “Candy.”
“Fortunately, we don’t put people behind bars because they say things that are offensive and obscene,” he argued.
Fisher told the jury that the case was not about whether “Candy” was real. It was about whether Bisans believed “Candy” was 13, she said. She said jurors could see for themselves in transcripts of the chats that he believed just that.
“He refers to her age 43 times, and many of those were after the phone call,” Fisher said.
She argued that Bisans was “preparing her for sexual intercourse” by showing her adult videos featuring sex acts that he indicated he favored. She pointed out to jurors that during the course of the chats, the language Bisans used gradually shifted from “if” he were to have intercourse with “Candy” to “when” he would.
Fisher argued that Bisans also showed a consciousness of guilt, for example in expressing a desire to make sure that “Candy’s” mother would be working on the day they were to meet.
The defendant will be sentenced Aug. 10 after completion of a sentencing-assessment report. Under state law, he could be assessed from five to 30 years on each of the three convictions.
The prosecutor’s office also filed for prior and persistent offender status, which could affect the sentencing. Court records show Bisans was convicted of first-degree statutory sodomy in 1991 in Audrain County.
Staff writer Jeff Lehr contributed to this report.
Bond increase
Donald Bisans was returned to the Jasper County Jail after Wednesday’s jury verdicts, and Circuit Judge Gayle Crane raised his bond to $100,000.
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