MINNESOTA
Pioneer Press
By Emily Gurnon
egurnon@pioneerpress.com
POSTED: 10/29/2014
Who was calling the shots when Stephen J. Schulz corresponded online with an undercover cop?
Was it Schulz himself, who posted the original Craigslist ad, as the prosecution argued Wednesday? Or was it was the police sergeant who posed as a 15-year-old boy looking for sex, as the defense insisted?
“The only person who had absolute control at every step of the way was this defendant,” Ramsey County prosecutor Yasmin Mullings said Wednesday in her closing argument of Schulz’s trial. The Golden Valley man faces one felony count of soliciting a minor online for sexual contact.
Mullings reminded the jury of the testimony of St. Paul police Sgt. Jeffrey Keller, assigned to the Minnesota Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.
Keller said that in a sting operation, once the other email correspondent backs off or stops writing, the communication is ended. That’s done to avoid entrapment, he testified.
But entrapment is exactly what Keller did to Schulz, argued his attorney, Paul Engh.
“They deceived him. They lied to him,” Schulz said of the police. “He would never have gone to St. Paul had they not lied to him.” …
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