The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law
Chapter 12: I Was Entrapped!
Entrapment pg 21: More Mythbusting
MYTH #2: The police cannot ask you to commit a crime.
Counsel explaining to Grayson
COUNSEL
Sorry, Grayson. They can ask all they want. All you had to say was “no.”
They’re allowed to go after those who would say “yes.”
MYTH #3: The police can’t break the law themselves.
Counsel explaining to Sylvester
COUNSEL
Sorry, Sylvester. A cop joining your conspiracy is not entrapping you.
You were already involved. Saul didn’t turn you criminal.
I would say Jacobson v. U.S. adds a slight wrinkle to what you wrote about Myth #2, in that I don’t think police can quite ask all they want. As the majority opinion says: “Law enforcement officials go too far when they ‘implant in the mind of an innocent person the disposition to commit the alleged offense and induce its commission in order that they may prosecute.'”
It wouldn’t apply to the Grayson example as written, but if the police officer asked him many many times to commit the crime, a court might conclude he was not predisposed to commit it and I would think that might rise to the level of entrapment based on Jacobson.
Bit late on the ball here, but he addresses this a several pages ahead.
I’d say Greyson has a chance of walking on an entrapment plea. He’s probably blown it, but he can at least hope on the facts given. While he has been on the edge of this sort of crime, he has not done this level of crime before [on the given facts] and he can claim he never would have if the cops had stayed away. Now he is not Miss Super Reluctant [and probably was not reluctant at all], but he still has a shot at showing there would have been no crime if the cops had not caused it.
“On the edge of that sort of crime” by living in a neighbourhood with dealers? That’s all we were told, that he knew a few guys who deal. Nobody said he deals, or even uses.
It reminds me of the young girl who was asked by cops to buy a joint “so they could use it as evidence to bust the dealer”, and then immediately arrested when she did. Some of the tactics they use to go against actual criminals are seriously questionable, but creating their own criminals to bust? That’s despicable.
It’s absolutely despicable. Which is why it’s illegal, and called entrapment in the first place.
If just asking someone once, without any greater efforts at persuasion,is enough to cause them to do something, then it’s absurd to accuse a police officer of having “created their own criminal” in that instance.