Entrapment
Criminal defenses
Part of the common law series
Insanity · Immunity · Mental disorder
Diminished responsibility
Intoxication · Infancy
Automatism
Consent · Mistake
Duress · Necessity
Provocation · Self defense
False confession · Entrapment
See also
Criminal law and procedure
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trusts and estates Evidence
Portals
Law · Criminal justice
Entrapment is the act of a law enforcement
agent inducing a person to commit an offense
which should be illegal and the person would
otherwise have been unlikely to commit.[1] In
many jurisdictions, entrapment is a possible
defense against criminal guilt.
United States
The entrapment defense in the United States
has evolved mainly through case law. Two
competing tests exist for determining wheth-
er entrapment has taken place, known as the
"subjective" and "objective" tests.
Courts took a dim view of the defense at
first. "[It] has never availed to shield crime or
give indemnity to the culprit, and it is safe to
say that under any code of civilized, not to
say Christian, ethics, it never will" a New
York Supreme Court said in 1864.[2] Forty
years later, another judge in that state would
affirm that rejection, arguing "[courts] should
not hesitate to punish the crime actually com-
mitted by the defendant" when rejecting en-
trapment claimed in a grand larceny case.[3]
Other states, however, had already begun
reversing
convictions
on
entrapment
grounds.[4] Federal courts recognized entrap-
ment as a defense starting with Woo Wai v.
United States
(223 F 412 (9th Circuit
1915)).[5] The U.S. Supreme Court first de-
clined to consider the question of entrapment
in Casey v. United States (276 U.S. 413
(1928)), since the facts in the case were too
vague to definitively rule on the question.
Four years later, it did and in Sorrells v. Un-
ited States (287 U.S. 435 (1932)) unanim-
ously reversed the conviction of a North
Carolina factory worker who gave in to an
undercover Prohibition officer’s repeated en-
treaties t