Entrapment Case

Barnes Business Law 204 8 April 2011

Case for analysis, Page 111, Case 9

Busby was not enticed by law enforcement. Though Cowen's assistance was solicited by police, yet Mandell and busby never had contact with law enforcement until the sale was sure to happen.

Under the "subjective test," they were willing to commit the crime and under the "objective test" they had shown a "predisposition to commit" in selling cocaine by history of activity.

The idea behind entrapment is that the law abiding person would not have indulged in the activity unless enticed by law enforcement. Intent : Would the person have done the crime if the police did not solicit involvement?

The prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was not entrapped by government agents.

Entrapment holds if all three conditions are fulfilled:

Q: The idea for committing the crime came from the government agents and not from the person accused of the crime. It did not.

Q: Government agents then persuaded or talked the person into committing the crime. Simply giving someone the opportunity to commit a crime is not the same as persuading them to commit that crime. A: No

Q: The person was not ready and willing to commit the crime before interaction with the government agents.

A: Busby was willing

Prosecutors 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 "Meth" 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.

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."[9]