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In jurisprudence, entrapment is a legal defense by which a defendant may argue that he or she should not be held criminally liable for actions which broke the law, because he/she was induced (or entrapped) by the police to commit those acts. For the defense to be successful, the defendant must demonstrate that the police induced an otherwise unwilling person to commit a crime. Entrapment is an issue that must be considered in designing sting operations, as well as vice operations, particularly those involving kerb crawling, prostitution and (In the United Kingdom) soliciting. Entrapment (1999) is an American film directed by Jon Amiel, and starring Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones. ...
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This article concerns the common-law legal system, as contrasted with the civil law legal system; for other meanings of the term, within the field of law, see common law (disambiguation). ...
Criminal law (also known as penal law) is the body of statutory and common law that deals with crime and the legal punishment of criminal offenses. ...
Criminal procedure refers to the legal process for adjudicating claims that someone has violated the criminal law. ...
In a criminal trial, the insanity defenses are possible defenses by excuse, via which defendants may argue that they should not be held criminally liable for breaking the law, as they were mentally ill at the time of their allegedly criminal actions. ...
In criminal law of commonwealth countries, the defense of mental disorder - sometimes called the defence of mental illness - is a legal defence by excuse, by which a defendant may argue that they should not be held criminally liable for breaking the law, as they were at the time of their...
In criminal law, diminished responsibility (or diminished capacity) is a potential defense by excuse by which defendants argue that although they broke the law, they should not be held criminally liable for doing so, as their mental functions were diminished or impaired. ...
An intoxication defense, in criminal law, is a defense by excuse, via which a defendant argues that they should not be held criminally liable for actions which broke the law, because they were intoxicated. ...
The defense of infancy is a form of defense known as an excuse so that defendants falling within the definition of an infant are excluded from criminal liability for their actions, if at the relevant time, they had not reached an age of criminal responsibility. ...
Automatism is a disassociative state where the individual suffering from it has no control over their actions. ...
In the criminal law, consent may be an excuse and prevent the defendant from incurring liability for what was done. ...
Mistake of law and mistake of fact are two types of defense by excuse, via which a defendant may argue that they should not be held criminally liable for breaking the law or liable for damages under a civil law action. ...
For English law on the criminal defence, see duress in English law. ...
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For the country-specific law, see provocation in English law. ...
This article and defense of property deal with the legal concept of excused (sometimes termed justified) acts that might otherwise be illegal. ...
False Confession was a hardcore punk band in the early 1980s that emerged in the Oxnard, California area. ...
A contract is any promise or set of promises made by one party to another for the breach of which the law provides a remedy. ...
In the common law, a tort is a civil wrong for which the law provides a remedy. ...
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In the common law, a will or testament is a document by which a person (the testator) regulates the rights of others over his property or family after death. ...
The law of trusts and estates is generally considered the body of law which governs the management of personal affairs and the disposition of property of an individual in anticipation and the event of such persons incapacity or death, also known as the law of successions in civil law. ...
The law of evidence governs the use of testimony (e. ...
Philosophers of law ask what is law? and what should it be? Jurisprudence is the theory and philosophy of law. ...
In most litigation under the common law adversarial system the defendant, perhaps with the assistance of counsel, may allege or present defenses (or defences) in order to avoid liability, civil or criminal. ...
A defendant or defender is any party who is required to answer the complaint of a plaintiff or pursuer in a civil lawsuit before a court, or any party who has been formally charged or accused of violating a criminal statute. ...
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In the most general sense, a liability is anything that is a hindrance, or puts individuals at a disadvantage. ...
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Vice is a practice or habit that is considered immoral, depraved, and/or degrading in the associated society. ...
A kerb crawler is a man who drives round areas known for street prostitution soliciting women for sex. ...
Whore redirects here. ...
Solicitation is a crime; it is an inchoate offense that consists of a person inciting, counseling, advising, urging, or commanding another to commit a crime with the specific intent that the person solicited commit the crime. ...
United States
The entrapment defense in the United States has evolved mainly through case law. Two competing tests exist for determining whether entrapment has taken place, known as the "subjective" and "objective" tests.
Courts took a dim view of the defense at first. "[It] has never availed to shield crime or give indemnity to the culprit, and it is safe to say that under any code of civilized, not to say Christian, ethics, it never will" a New York Supreme Court said in 1864.[1] Forty years later, another judge in that state would affirm that rejection, arguing "[courts] should not hesitate to punish the crime actually committed by the defendant" when rejecting entrapment claimed in a grand larceny case.[2] The Supreme Court of the State of New York is the basic New York State trial court of general jurisidiction. ...
Larceny is a crime involving stealing. ...
Other states, however, had already begun reversing convictions on entrapment grounds[3] Federal courts recognized entrapment as a defense starting with Woo Wai v. United States (223 F 412 (9th Circuit 1915)).[4] The U.S. Supreme Court first declined to consider the question of entrapment in Casey v. United States (276 U.S. 413 (1928)), since the facts in the case were too vague to definitively rule on the question. Four years later, it did and in Sorrells v. United States (287 U.S. 435 (1932)) unanimously reversed the conviction of a North Carolina factory worker who gave in to an undercover Prohibition officer's repeated entreaties to get him some liquor. It identified the controlling question as "whether the defendant is a person otherwise innocent whom the government is seeking to punish for an alleged offense which is the product of the creative activity of its own officials".[5] The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts: District of Alaska District of Arizona Central District of California Eastern District of California Northern District of California Southern District of California District of Hawaii...
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Holding Entrapment is a valid defense; the prosecution must show the defendant had a predisposition to commit the crime if it is raised. ...
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The term Prohibition, also known as A Dry Law, refers to a law in a certain country by which the manufacture, transportation, import, export, and sale of alcoholic beverages is restricted or illegal. ...
In Sherman v. United States (356 U.S. 369 (1958)), the Court considered a similar case in which one recovering drug addict working with federal agents from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (a predecessor agency to today's Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)) solicited another to sell him drugs on the premise that his own efforts were failing. Again unanimous, its opinion focused more clearly on the defendant's predisposition to commit the offense, and on that basis overturned Sherman's conviction as well, since although he had two prior drug convictions, the most recent dated back five years. He was also attempting to rehabilitate himself, had made no profit on the sales and no drugs were found in his apartment when it was searched, suggesting the absence of a predisposition to break drug laws. "To determine whether entrapment has been established," it said, "a line must be drawn between the trap for the unwary innocent and the trap for the unwary criminal".[6] Holding Government cannot overcome entrapment defense by dissociating itself from informants conduct; prior related offenses not sufficient to demonstrate predisposition to commit crime if they occurred long before investigation began. ...
Drug addiction, or dependency is the compulsive use of drugs, to the point where the user has no effective choice but to continue use. ...
Amid evidence of corruption in 1929, the US Treasury Departments Narcotics Division collapsed and the following year Congress created the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN), still under the Treasury Deparment. ...
Since 1973, the DEA has enforced the drug laws in the United States. ...
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Prosecutors won the next two times entrapment came before the Court, in United States v. Russell (411 U.S. 423 (1973)) and Hampton v. United States (425 U.S. 484 (1976)), albeit by narrow margins. In the former, the Court upheld the conviction of a Washington man for manufacturing methamphetamine even though an undercover agent had supplied some of the ingredients, and also pondered an "outrageous government conduct" defense, though it did not enable it. Hampton let stand, by a similar margin, the conviction of a Missouri man who had, upon seeing track marks on a DEA informant's arms, expressed interest in selling him heroin. After several sales to the informant and undercover agents, he was arrested. The defendant alleged he had been led to believe by the informant that he was not selling heroin but a counterfeit. The Court found he was adequately predisposed to sell heroin in any event. Holding Government agents active participation in criminal conspiracy was not entrapment. ...
Holding Government agents supplying illegal drugs for transaction does not constitute entrapment where defendant had predisposition to sell drugs regardless of supplier. ...
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This article is about the psychostimulant, d-methamphetamine. ...
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This became known as the "subjective" test of entrapment, since it focused on the defendant's state of mind. However, in all cases, concurring opinions had advocated an "objective" test, focusing instead on whether the conduct of the police or other investigators would catch only those "ready and willing to commit crime."[7] This, they and supporters argued, avoided the dubious issue of an unexpressed legislative intent on which the Sorrells court had relied and instead grounded the entrapment defense, like the exclusionary rule, in the court's supervisory role over law enforcement. And like the exclusionary rule, they would have had judges, not juries, decide whether a defendant had been entrapped as a matter of law.[8] In United States constitutional law, the exclusionary rule is a legal principle holding that evidence collected or analyzed in violation of the U.S. Constitution is inadmissible for a criminal prosecution in a court of law (that is, it cannot be used in a criminal trial). ...
For the band, see The Police. ...
Since the subjective test focusing on predisposition had, unlike the exclusionary rule, not been applied to the states, they were free to follow it as they saw fit. The state courts or legislatures of 37 states have chosen the subjective test, while the others use the objective test.[9] Some have allowed both the judge and the jury to rule on whether the defendant was entrapped.[8]
In the Supreme Court's last major ruling on entrapment, Jacobson v. United States (503 U.S. 540 (1992)), which overturned the conviction of a Nebraska man for receiving child pornography via the mail, the subjective vs. objective debate was completely absent. Both the majority and dissenting opinions focused solely on whether the prosecution had established that the defendant had a predisposition for purchasing such material (which had only recently been outlawed at the time of his arrest). Since no other material was found in his home save what he had purchased from the undercover postal inspectors, Justice Byron White believed the operation had implanted the idea in his mind through mailings decrying politicians for assaulting civil liberties by passing laws such as the one the inspectors hoped he would break. Sandra Day O'Connor disagreed in her dissent, arguing that the record did indeed establish that Jacobson was interested in continuing the purchases. Analysts believed that was the Court's indication it considered the subjective vs. objective debate settled. Holding Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant was predisposed to commit a crime prior to any contact with government agents in order to overcome entrapment defense; defendants prior commission of acts later prohibited that were legal at the time did not establish evidence of predisposition sufficient...
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Child pornography refers to pornographic material depicting children. ...
Byron Raymond White (June 8, 1916 – April 15, 2002) won fame both as a football running back and as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. ...
Sandra Day OConnor (born March 26, 1930) is an American jurist who served as the first female Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1981 to 2006. ...
University of Arizona law professor Gabriel Chin points out that the entire federal entrapment defense rests on statutory construction, which allows for the possibility that Congress could simply repeal or modify it so that operations implanting suggestion of criminal activity were specifically authorized by law.[10] The University of Arizona (UA or U of A) is a land-grant and space-grant public institution of higher education and research located in Tucson, Arizona, United States. ...
Canada The Supreme Court of Canada developed the Canadian version of the doctrine of entrapment in three major decisions: R. v. Amato, [1982] 2 S.C.R. 418, R. v. Mack, [1988] 2 S.C.R. 903, and R. v. Barnes, [1991] 1 S.C.R. 449. There are two different forms of entrapment in Canadian law. The Supreme Court of Canada (French: Cour suprême du Canada) is the highest court of Canada and is the final court of appeal in the Canadian justice system. ...
The first type of entrapment, "random virtue testing", occurs when the police offer an individual the opportunity to commit a crime without reasonable suspicion that either that individual, or the place where that individual is located, is associated with the criminal activity under investigation.
If police do have such a reasonable suspicion, they are still limited to only providing an opportunity to commit the offence. The second form of entrapment occurs when the police go beyond merely providing an opportunity to commit an offence, and instead actually induce the commission of the offence. Some factors a court may consider when deciding whether police have induced the offence include the type of crime being investigated, whether an average person would have been induced, the persistence and number of attempts made by the police, the type of inducement used (e.g. fraud, deceit, reward), and the existence of express or implied threats.
The question of entrapment is only considered after there has been a finding of guilt. If, after finding the accused guilty, the court determines that the accused was entrapped, the court will enter a judicial stay of proceedings. In effect, this is similar to an acquittal.
United Kingdom In English law entrapment is not a substantive defense (R v Sang); i.e. it does not automatically negate the prosecution case. “UK†redirects here. ...
The Court has the authority to stay the proceedings (prevent the case going ahead) if to proceed would "threaten the integrity of the justice system". The Court may also exclude evidence obtained unfairly under the provisions of section 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, but this is held not to be appropriate where entrapment is claimed. (See commentary in external links for further reference.)
The main authority on entrapment in the United Kingdom is the decision of R v Loosely; Lord Advocates Reference (N.3 of 2000) In this House of Lords decision, Lords Hoffman and Hutton proposed certain factors that would have to be considered in deciding whether an accused had been entrapped. These included:
- whether the police had reason to suspect the accused or a particular place as being involved in illegal activities;
- the nature of the offence (ie. where the crime is of a consensual nature where victims might be unwilling to expose its occurrence); and
- whether the undercover officers presented the accused with an "unexceptional opportunity" to commit an offence and whether the accused was incited, enticed or wheedled into committing an offence (Nottingham City Council v. Amin).
In Scotland the main authority is the case of Brown v. HMA which stated that entrapment will occur when law enforcement officials cause an offence to be committed which would not have occurred had it not been for their involvement. The remedies available correspond with those in England and are considered to be either a plea in bar of trial or a challenge to the admissibility of evidence obtained through entrapment.
Germany In German law, it is normally forbidden (§ 26 StGB) to induce or persuade someone to commit a crime, including the attempt to do so (§ 30 StGB, in German). However, the German Federal Court Of Justice has established that entrapment by undercover police agents is not a reason to drop the case per se (e.g. GA 1975, 333, 334). If undercover agents have been used without proper justification, punishment for the committed offence may be reduced (1st Senate's decision in 1 StR 148/84 - 23rd of May, 1984). The Bundesgerichtshof or BGH (German for federal court) is the highest Germany for civil and criminal lawsuits. ...
This page includes English translations of several Latin phrases and abbreviations such as . ...
- In the case of persons who are not initially under suspicion and unlikely to commit a certain crime, a decision from 1999 (18th of November, BGH 1 StR 221/99, in German) stated that entrapment of such persons violates the right to a fair trial (and therefore the punishment for the committed offence may be reduced).
Europe (Council of Europe) The European Court of Human Rights has criticised the use of undercover agents in Germany and the United Kingdom, especially in cases related to drug trafficking[citation needed]. European Court of Human Rights building in Strasbourg The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), often referred to informally as the Strasbourg Court, was created to systematise the hearing of human rights complaints against States Parties to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, adopted by...
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References - ^ Board of Commissioners v. Backus, 29 How. Pr. 33, 42 (1864) cited in Lord, Kenneth; Entrapment and Due Process: Moving Toward A Dual System of Defenses, 25 Fl St. U. Law Rev. 468, 1998.
- ^ People v. Mills, 70 N.E. 786, 791 (N.Y. 1904), cited at Lord, supra.
- ^ See John D. Lombardo, Causation and "Objective" Entrapment: Toward a Culpability-Centered Approach, 43 UCLA L. REV. 209, 219-20 (1995). See, e.g., People v. McCord, 42 N.W. 1106 (Mich. 1889)
- ^ Chin, Gabriel J.; The Story of Jacobson v United States: Catching Criminals or Creating Crime?, Arizona Legal Studies Discussion Paper N. 06-12, February 2006, retrieved August 10, 2006, 39. This draft is described as a chapter in the author's forthcoming Criminal Law Stories.
- ^ Sorrells v. United States, 287 U.S. 435, 451.
- ^ Sherman v. United States, 356 U.S. 369, 375.
- ^ Sorrells, Id., 287 U.S. at 384 (Frankfurter, J., concurring.
- ^ a b Chin, Id., 6, citing Marcus, Paul, The Entrapment Defense.
- ^ Scott C. Paton, “The Government Made Me Do It”: A Proposed Approach to Entrapment Under Jacobson v. United States, 79 Cornell L. Rev. 995, 1002 n.45 (1994)
- ^ Chin, Id., 33.
Holding Entrapment is a valid defense; the prosecution must show the defendant had a predisposition to commit the crime if it is raised. ...
Holding Government cannot overcome entrapment defense by dissociating itself from informants conduct; prior related offenses not sufficient to demonstrate predisposition to commit crime if they occurred long before investigation began. ...
Felix Frankfurter (November 15, 1882 – February 22, 1965) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. ...
Further reading - Gerald Dworkin, "Entrapment and the Creation of Crime," in Controversies in Criminal Law: Philosophical Essays on Responsibility and Procedure (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), pp. 220-231.
- Michael Gorr and Sterling Harwood, eds., Controversies in Criminal Law: Philosophical Essays on Responsibility and Procedure (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), 273pp.
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