The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law
Chapter 12: I Was Entrapped!
Entrapment pg 24: The Police Don’t Have to Stop You
Finally, there’s
MYTH #5: The police can’t just let you commit an offense, and then arrest you for it.
Counsel explaining to Zeke
COUNSEL
Sorry, Zeke, but it was your decision to block the bridge.
Zeke was in a crowd, though. He couldn’t have blocked the bridge by himself.
Could he argue that he couldn’t escape the crowd and thus was deprived of his choice?
Looks like he joined the crowd with the intent to help it block the bridge. If he later changed his mind but couldn’t get out… well, didn’t we already cover this in another chapter?
Sound like it was intent to reach city hall and protest outside that. You never said he intended to STAY on the bridge.
No, that would be conspiracy to obstruct. :-)
I kinda have to wonder about this one, though… as written, the protest march got onto the bridge, but wasn’t stopping until the police actually stopped it. So my concern is that Zeke (and the march) were not intending to “obstruct the bridge”, and instead merely passing along it. Assuming any random passers-by weren’t being prevented from also crossing the bridge, the march would simply have been using its entire capacity.
Wouldn’t be an “entrapment” defense, though.
It seems like it should. The crime they’re accused of is blocking the bridge, and the cops surrounded them at both ends and made them to do that. If the cops literally forcing you to commit a crime isn’t entrapment, what is?
Not only did they literally force the protesters to commit a crime, they literally trapped them.
What? Useing the bridge to cross the river isn’t a crime, even if it temporarily prevents others from using it – otherwise we’d be arresting everyone who drove across!
The crowd was on its way to city hall. The bridge was their path. They were crossing it, *then the police blocked them from getting off, forcing them to stay there blocking traffic*. In what way is this not entrapment?
Some of you are mis-remembering what happened; go back and look at the two pages again. The cops lined the walkway, and Zeke didn’t say anything about the cops blocking, but that they should have given warning that the group was in violation. Never mind that they probably didn’t wait for someone to try to pass through.
Crossing a bridge is a crime? Good to know.