A B.C. Supreme Court judge has reserved his decision on whether Vancouver Island police were guilty of entrapment in an undercover investigation targeting child sex predators online.

Saanich resident Pai-Chih Chiang was convicted of communication for the purposes of obtaining sex from an underage person on June 4, after he responded to an "erotic services" ad on Craigslist.

On Monday, defence lawyer Michael Mulligan asked for a stay of proceedings against his client, arguing that Saanich police had entrapped Chiang.

"This is about the clearest case of entrapment that I've seen," Mulligan told ctvbc.ca.

He said he argued that police committed two forms of entrapment: so-called random virtue testing and "going beyond providing an opportunity for crime and actually creating it."

A date has not yet been fixed for the judge to make his decision on the entrapment argument, but Crown lawyer Nils Jensen said he expects a court date sometime in late September.

Read more about Chiang's case and undercover online child sex investigations.

The arrest

Chiang was arrested on April 14, 2009, after responding to an ad promising "Sexy, young tight bodies lookin for fun."

Undercover police officers gave Chiang a choice: "We have 2 girls Janelle 16 and Courtney 17 which do you prefer?"

Chiang asked for pictures, and decided on "Janelle." The woman posing as Janelle was actually a police officer, who was more than 30 years old.

Chiang then agreed to a rendezvous at a local hotel, where he met an undercover officer, "Mckenzie" posing as a madam.

According to court documents, she told him that there would be a few ground rules for the encounter: "Because Janelle is only 16, there can be no rough play, or rough sex, or anything like that."

In court, the undercover officer said that Chiang looked shocked as she told him that.

"She's only 16?" he asked.

Mckenzie assured him everything was "cool," and that Janelle was eager to please.

"Yeah, but is that alright?" Chiang asked.

Mckenzie admitted that the girl was under the legal age, but told him: "There are 16-year-olds walking the streets. At least this way we are trying to protect them as best we can."

After a short conversation about pricing, Mckenzie asked Chiang if he was in.

"Yeah, I'll check it out," he said, before walking into the hotel room, where he was arrested by the waiting officers.

The argument

One of the officers involved in the sting that snared Chiang, Const. Andy Stuart, has said that the majority of men who responded to the Craigslist ad turned away when they learned they were meeting underage "girls."

"Most of them said, ‘No thanks, too young,'" Stuart explained. "People did turn away."

He testified in court on Monday, where Mulligan argued that Saanich police were conducting a random virtue test when they placed the original ad on Craigslist.

He gave an analogy: "The police couldn't go and put a wallet in a park, and be waiting in the bushes to arrest people who pick it up and keep it."

To justify an undercover investigation, police must have reasonable grounds to suspect that either the person or the place they are targeting is connected to criminal activity.

Mulligan said that the Saanich police Craigslist operation was based on only one parent's complaint about an underage girl advertising sex online, which he believes doesn't give them enough ground to consider Craigslist a place where underage sex is regularly being sold.

"They didn't take any steps to determine the age of someone posting on there," Mulligan said.

But he believes police also committed entrapment when "Mckenzie" reassured Chiang about having sex with a 16-year-old, telling him that it was "cool."

"The evidence was that when the person showed up, he appeared shocked," Mulligan said. "This was going beyond providing a mere opportunity."

Mulligan said that this is the first time he's argued police entrapment in court. "Happily, it is (a rare argument,) otherwise we're looking at a police state."