The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law
Chapter 12: I Was Entrapped!
Entrapment pg 27: Snitches/Informants/Cooperators
After Francine is arrested for espionage, she learns that Glenn was in a whole nother kind of trouble the whole time.
Glenn on bended knee again
It seems that he had been caught selling secrets. To get a lighter sentence, he’d offered to cooperate with the feds and help them catch other spies.
Glenn has to think
But he didn’t actually know any other spies. So, like countless informants before him, he tried to get somebody—anybody—else in trouble.
Francine being dragged away by the FBI, as Glenn shrugs it off.
FRANCINE
You bastard!
GLENN
Hey, better you than me, buddy.
Glenn was acting on the government’s behalf, so it counts as police action. And what he did was absolutely entrapment.
You would think they would have explained how it works to him a bit better. But of course, someone has to do it wrong or we wouldn’t have an example.
I am struggling to see the difference between Francine’s case and Grayson’s case. Although Grayson did not initially refuse, was he not corrupted by the police (in the form of a bribe), which caused him to commit a crime that he otherwise would not have? Grayson was not going to commit the crime on his own, and would not have committed it for the police if had they not bribed him. What if the police had offered him $1 million, or $1 billion? Few people (especially members of Grayson’s economic class) would initially refuse such lucrative opportunity, even if they would have never done it on their own.
Yeah, I’d like to see this explanation. Another case I had read was this young man offering this young woman on the street a box of salad since she looked “raggedy”. It was a good gesture of offering someone food. But the woman offered sex in return. Although initally confused, the man complied, and that’s when the cops arrested him.
That sounds like entrapment or non sequitur — he didn’t do it for sex (although one could argue…); she (apparently) offered it because he was nice.
The difference really just boils down how much persuasion occurs. If Grayson had said “no, you know I’m not in that business” and the cop had responded with something like “do it or I’ll tell the kingpin you snubbed us” that’d almost definitely be entrapment. Basically, anything that would make a “reasonable” person commit the crime counts.
As for the “enormous amounts of money” hypothetical, I pointed this out in an earlier comment, but I would expect most people (not even “reasonable” people, but most people period) to be extremely suspicious of anyone purporting to be handing out millions to a stranger for *any* reason. I wouldn’t accept a deal to deliver drugs for millions even if they showed me the cash up front, because I would fully expect it to be collected off my corpse after the completion of the delivery.
Which is why police never actually offer anyone $1 million or whatever. The point of sting operations is to fool career criminals, which offering insanely off-base payouts is never going to do.
Yeah, I’d like to see this explanation. Another case I had read was this young man offering this young woman on the street a box of salad since she looked “raggedy”. It was a good gesture of offering someone food. But the woman offered sex in return. Although initally confused, the man complied, and that’s when the cops arrested him.