NCJ Number
104340
Journal
Rutgers Law Journal Volume: 16 Issue: 3-4 Dated: (Spring-Summer 1985) Pages: 937-989
Date Published
1985
Length
53 pages
Annotation
This article outlines the entrapment defense and its procedural shortcomings; details the recent trend in undercover investigations of white-collar and organized crime, focusing particularly on the ABSCAM caper; demonstrates weaknesses in current rationales for the entrapment defense; and proposes an alternative rationale.
Abstract
The entrapment doctrine mandates the release of otherwise guilty defendants when the State excessively encouraged them to commit a crime. The entrapment defense is traditionally accepted in U.S. courts as a substantive criminal defense. It applies only to the encouragement by a State agent to commit crime, not to encouragement by a private individual. Currently, the entrapment defense hinges on whether the defendants were predisposed to commit the crime (i.e., the defendants are criminal types who regularly engage in criminal behavior) or were not predisposed to commit the crime apart from the encouragement of the State agents. This distinction between the predisposed and the nonpredisposed individual is artificial and not capable of accurate determination. The State should be banned from all forms of encouragement to criminal behavior, regardless of assessments of a person's predisposition to commit a particular crime. This would check arbitrary and abusive State behavior. 270 footnotes.