Suppose I take someone I find disagreeable and put them in a room and say I'll take basic care of them but that they can't leave for 5-7 years. If I did this it would be illegal. If the government does it it is not. Yet incarceration is not championed as a violation of the rule of law.
The accused will still get a fair trial. The reason entrapment isn't besides the point is covert police activity checked by laws against entrapment are part of a long tradition of legally admissible police behaviour - there is nothing evidently abnormal about this case.
I do not believe in exceptionalism - if I were in the wrong social group I cannot say for certain I could not, eventually, be re-conditioned in a socially destructive way. Whether it is the individual's or the movement's or society's fault that a young person is found seriously contemplating (a threshold with judicial precedent that the FBI is and the jury will be made aware of) blowing up bridges is irrelevant from the perspective of justice as much as a shooter's peers bullying him is to his sentencing. Those factors, instead, inform reform discussions going forward.
Thinking about a crime is not - and should not - be a crime. Actively planning one is. The line between conception and execution is blurry. That does not mean we need to watch and wait for someone to blow up a bridge before we can arrest them.
The accused will still get a fair trial. The reason entrapment isn't besides the point is covert police activity checked by laws against entrapment are part of a long tradition of legally admissible police behaviour - there is nothing evidently abnormal about this case.
I do not believe in exceptionalism - if I were in the wrong social group I cannot say for certain I could not, eventually, be re-conditioned in a socially destructive way. Whether it is the individual's or the movement's or society's fault that a young person is found seriously contemplating (a threshold with judicial precedent that the FBI is and the jury will be made aware of) blowing up bridges is irrelevant from the perspective of justice as much as a shooter's peers bullying him is to his sentencing. Those factors, instead, inform reform discussions going forward.
Thinking about a crime is not - and should not - be a crime. Actively planning one is. The line between conception and execution is blurry. That does not mean we need to watch and wait for someone to blow up a bridge before we can arrest them.