VERDICT: Former UN weapons inspector Ritter guilty of unlawful contact with minor

VERDICT: Former UN weapons inspector Ritter guilty of unlawful contact with minor

Pocono Record ^ | April 14, 2011 | Pocono Record

Posted on Thursday, April 14, 2011 8:22:09 PM by John W

Former U.N. chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter has been found guilty of unlawful contact with minors and five lesser charges after a three-day trial in Monroe County Court on charges stemming from an online sex sting.

Ritter, 49, of Delmar, N.Y., was found guilty of unlawful contact with a minor for masturbating on a Web camera and engaging in a sexually graphic online chat with an undercover Barrett Township police officer posing as a 15-year-old girl in 2009.
The jury deliberated for more than six hours after the prosecution and defense both gave closing arguments in the morning.
During the trial, the defense portrayed Ritter as a family man and decorated veteran, even suggesting he could be a victim of a conspiracy for his outspoken criticism of the 2003 Iraq war. Ritter's legal team tore apart the techniques used by Barrett Township officer Ryan Venneman in conducting the sting.
Meanwhile, the prosecution pointed to similar accusations surrounding Ritter in New York state back in 2001. In both incidents, he was accused of arranging to meet with teenage girls – who turned out to be undercover cops.

Ritter was never arrested in the first case, receiving only a warning, and the charges were later dropped in the second incident after he agreed to seek professional help.
Ritter said his controversial 1998 resignation from his U.N. job drove him into a self-destructive depression that led to those incidents. He said he knew the teenage girls he met online were really undercover officers.
As to the most recent charges against him, Ritter said he once again was feeling depressed, but thought the “girl” he was chatting with was really an adult playing out a fantasy of being a teen who likes older men.
Ritter, 49, of Delmar, N.Y., was the U.N.'s chief weapons inspector in Iraq following the first Gulf War. He accused the United States government and U.N. of failing to take action when Iraq blocked inspectors from suspected weapons sites in 1998, leading to his resignation.

But he later became an outspoken critic of the 2003 Iraq war, insisting the country had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction.
Check back at PoconoRecord.com for more on the verdict.