The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law
Chapter 12: I Was Entrapped!
Entrapment pg 5: The Police Asked Me To Do It
Grayson isn’t a drug dealer, but he knows one or two around the neighborhood.
Grayson, a bald guy in a tank-top undershirt, pointing to people offscreen
GRAYSON
Yeah, Peter provides for the potheads, and Harry handles the heroin.
One day, a dealer from out of town offered him a wad of cash if he’d deliver a haversack of heroin to Harry.
Young guy in a baseball cap offering a haversack to Grayson.
DEALER
I feel safer this way. He knows you, after all.
Grayson took the cash, delivered the bag,
Handoff of cash from the dealer to Grayson, handoff of haversack, hands in handcuffs
and immediately got arrested.
That so-called “dealer” was really an undercover cop. Now Grayson’s looking at years in prison, and he’s trying to convince his lawyer that he should walk:
GRAYSON (indignant)
Hey, it wasn’t my idea to do it. The police themselves asked me to do it!
I would think he would have a better case than most. The others were all looking to commit crimes when the cops found them, whereas it sounds like this guy was minding him own business. That may not be good enough for State (the State? Not sure of the correct style for anthro state…), but a good argument can be made that going around trying to make law-abiding people into criminals just to arrest them isn’t something we want the cops doing even if they don’t use force.
As I understand it, it depends on what amount of effort went into the attempt. Just asking someone, “Hey, will you do this?” like cops pretending to be prostitutes or narcotics agents sometimes do is fine.
The asshole who went undercover in a high school, targeted an autistic student, pretended to be his friend, and then cajoled, harassed, and threatened to end the friendship if he didn’t buy drugs for him (an activity the kid had never before had any involvement or interest in)? Entrapment.
That does sounds like another of those fuzzy, gray-area, “gut feeling” situations that I hate so much but which are difficult to get rid of and still have a remotely reasonable system…
It could be that the police weren’t primarily after Grayson but Harry, who would be more worth their undercover efforts than the small fish.