The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law
Chapter 12: I Was Entrapped!
Entrapment pg 13: Defense Counsel’s Answer
To each of these defendants, their lawyer has only one thing to say:
Defense Counsel screaming in frustration
COUNSEL
NO!!
Each of her clients has fallen for one of the common MYTHS about entrapment.
Counsel, exasperated
COUNSEL
And all of them are WRONG!!
Ahh, this gives me flashbacks. Case 3 of Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies. ‘I did the crime, but I wouldn’t have admitted to it if the police-affiliated party didn’t ask me to’ cannot possibly be entrapment.
And the bad part for the lawyer is that probably none of them want to listen to her saying so.
Disagree. They were entrapped, and if the law disagrees, then the law needs to be changed. Also, drug offenses are not even in the same league as firearms offenses. Drugs need to be legalized, regulated, and treated the same as alcohol is currently.
Cora: Why should a cop be required to tell the truth? No one else does. Any person who only told the truth would get beaten to death by his own offended family and friends.
You’re probably thinking about ethics, which is a totally different matter.
See the old saw about anyone having a price — if someone asked you for sex (not even anything unusual) and offered a billion bucks, how many people would turn that down? If married, let spouse decide. Note, though, that WOULD be entrapment. In this case Cora is asking for money, not being offered money out of the blue. Granted, this profession is probably better off regulated than illegal.
Grayson trafficked heroin. His only defenses would be that he didn’t know heroin was illegal or that he didn’t know it was heroin (or thought the guy was joking about it being heroin) which is likely to be nearly impossible to prove to the satisfaction of a jury. If you knew for sure it was a cop, the first thought should be that the cop is dirty. Or maybe he felt that he didn’t have a choice. Would you argue with a dirty cop and expect to walk away? In this case, it would be the lesser evil of self-defrnse. Again, this is probably better off regulated than illegal, if only because it’s easier to control through regulation than as a crime.
Sylvester — how else can the police reasonably catch him without a mole?
No one forced Jen to buy an illegal weapon– and the only reason the gun was offered was because Jen was looking for one.
Zeke — the police are not required to follow everyone around, pestering you to not break the law.
Grayson’s incident was unethical if he’d never done anything of the kind before. Zeke’s incident was unethical if he and the group had never knowingly blocked traffic before and if the police didn’t make an effort to be friendly and say “you can’t block traffic without a permit; if you don’t clear the way for traffic immediately, we’ll have to arrest you.” Their action would tend to emphasize the corruption of the Mayor, another reason to be nice.