Brailsfordv.State
Brandoyn Brailsford agreed to pay $80 for sex with a person advertised as 19, but continued arranging the encounter after an undercover officer told him she was 14; he drove to the meeting park and police arrested him. A jury convicted him of trafficking a person for sexual servitude and attempted aggravated child molestation. Brailsford challenged the sufficiency of the evidence and a jury recharge, and raised entrapment and abandonment defenses at trial. The Court of Appeals held that his continued communications and travel to the park supported findings that he knowingly solicited a person he believed to be under 18 for paid sex and took a substantial step toward aggravated child molestation. The State disproved entrapment because he continued after learning her age, and disproved abandonment because his claimed reason for leaving—unease and fear after a prior robbery and shooting—did not show a voluntary, complete renunciation. The recharge correctly explained that the State had to prove either texting or travel alleged in the indictment, not both, because attempt requires only one substantial step. The court affirmed both convictions and sentences; a separate attempted-child-molestation count merged and was moot because no judgment was entered on it.
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