You never quite know who you might meet on a dating app. Perhaps someone attractive, with similar interests and a compatible background. Perhaps someone who will make your life miserable and do you grave harm. After all, you might meet someone like Kailan Wang, who was sentenced to one year imprisonment and three years supervised release for cyberstalking and harassment.

Per the government’s statement, Wang had issues.

A Utah County woman was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment [and thee years of probation] today for cyberstalking two male victims she met on online dating platforms and became obsessed with them….

According to court documents and statements made at Wang’s change of plea and sentencing hearings, Wang connected with the victims separately on online dating sites in 2017 and 2018 and became obsessed with each victim. Using multiple accounts, fake names, social media accounts, and phone numbers, she harassed and disparaged them publicly and privately, tagging their friends, family, and employers.

On three separate occasions, Wang reported the victims to the federal Internet Crimes Complaint Center (IC3) claiming she was being harassed and impersonated online by them. Wang reported that they did these things together, even though there is no evidence that the victims had any relation to each other. Wang admitted that she filed the IC3 complaints to get law enforcement to investigate the victims in order to harass and intimidate them.

Wang’s crimes against victim 1 and victim 2 are not isolated incidents. Wang engaged in a pattern of stalking behavior in 2013 and was convicted in the state of New York.

Upon sentencing, Utah District Judge Ted Stewart imposed, inter alia, an unusual condition of release.

Defendant objected to the condition that she notify any intimate partners “about the potential risk she poses” as vague. To avoid any vagueness, the Court imposed the following: “The court requires you to notify any intimate partners that you have been convicted of cyberstalking and pose a risk of stalking and harassment to intimate partners.” The Court finds this condition is necessary to protect the public considering Defendant’s history of cyberstalking and her relationships with her past victims.

The court has significant latitude to fashion appropriate conditions for supervised release, which can include compelled speech as here. Granted, it could have been worse. Consider that the judge could have phrased the defendant’s warning in less delicate language, or expanded it beyond “intimate partners” to everyone with whom she comes into contact. Even so, this is an extraordinary condition, pretty much precluding any possibility that any moderately sane person would become involved in a relationship with Wang, thereby denying Wang the ability to establish any loving relationships.

Isn’t an ex-con entitled to find love? If it’s acceptable to presume recidivism, why then not lock her up for a longer period of time as a specific deterrent, or better yet, fashion an actual sentence that satisfies the parsimony clause while also serving to fulfill the factors set forth in 18 USC 3553(a) rather than brand her with a scarlet warning?

Then again, how does the court figure this condition will actually accomplish any useful goal? Will the probation officer chaperone her dates to make sure the warning is properly given? What about dates that have yet to reach the stage of intimacy that requires the warning? Is there any reason to believe that these “partners” are someone protected from the crazy she might wreak?

There is the general rule that you don’t engage in intimacy with a crazy person, no matter how “hot” he or she might be,* but that rule is largely honored in the breach. It stands to reason that a reasonably attractive and lonely woman will find comfort in the arms of a man at some point after her release from prison. If Wang gives the requisite warning and the fellow chooses to become intimate nonetheless, has he waived any claim to criminal victimhood and assume the risk that she will ruin his life?

Is the condition imposed by the court appropriate, or an overreaching condition designed to ameliorate her potential to harm the public for lack of a better alternative? Is there a better alternative? If she has served her sentence of incarceration, should she be allowed to go about her life and pursue happiness without the burden of this rather brutal condition as having “paid her debt to society”?

And if this condition is proper, why not have thieves, for example, be required to warn future associates that they’ve been convicted and might steal from them? Pretty much any crime has the potential for recidivism which could harm the public. Where does it end?

*There is a vulgar phrase commonly used to express this rule, but it is inappropriate for a family blawg even though it might well be used at a presidential rally.