State of Tennessee v. Anthony Cornelius Baylis

During a sting operation, Anthony Cornelius Baylis solicited sex from an undercover officer posing as a sixteen-year-old girl, encouraged her to come to Knoxville so that she could charge higher rates, and offered to be her “sponsor.” A jury convicted Baylis of commercial sex trafficking under Tennessee Code Annotated section 39-13-309 (2018 & Supp. 2020). Baylis argues that the evidence was insufficient to support his conviction. To resolve Baylis’s sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenge, we must determine whether section 39-13-309 proscribes the attempted sex trafficking of a law enforcement officer posing as a minor during a sting operation when there is no evidence of coercion or deception. We conclude that it does, so we affirm Baylis’s conviction and the judgment of the Court of Criminal Appeals.