From: matt@smoke.brl.mil (Matthew Rosenblatt)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Re: Slippery Slope
Summary: All "slippery slope" arguments are not equal.
Keywords: nuclear waste; Xth Amendment; federalism
Date: 16 Apr 92 15:57:59 GMT
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.

In article <1992Apr15.162104.7871@midway.uchicago.edu> 
thf2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:

>In article <18489@smoke.brl.mil> matt@smoke.brl.mil (Matthew Rosenblatt) 
>writes:

>>Seriously, there are "slippery slope" arguments, and there are "slippery 
>>slope" arguments.  Here is another one, by the same Justice:
>>[arguments deleted]   [Matt Rosenblatt]

>All due respect, Matthew, the two are precisely analagous, the only
>difference being you agree with one, but not the other.   [Ted Frank]

Maybe all "slippery slope" arguments are "analogous" simply because
they all have the same structure, but that does not mean that all
"slippery slope" arguments are equally valid or even equally plausible.

>Any time a vague standard is set up without a bright line rule you
>have the potential for a slippery slope.  Given Jacobsen, at what
>point do you rule police efforts to be entrapment?  Okay, 2.5 years
>is too much, that's entrapment.  How's about a one-year effort?
>Six months?  Two months?  Two weeks?  Two minutes?  Where did you draw
>the cut-off line, Matt?  And what language in the opinion justifies
>the use of that cut-off line?   [Ted Frank]

     >>	``Had the agents in this case simply offered (Jacobson) the
     >>opportunity to order child pornography through the mails, and 
     >>(Jacobson) -- who must be presumed to know the law -- had 
     >>promptly availed himself of this criminal opportunity, it is
       
     >>unlikely that his entrapment defense would have warranted
     >>a jury instruction,'' wrote White.
  
     >>``But that is not what happened here. By the time (Jacobson) 
     >>finally placed his order, he had already been the target of 
     >>26 months of repeated mailings and communications from 
                    ^^^^^^^^
     >>government agents and fictitious organizations,'' White continued. 

>It seems to me (and I haven't read the opinion, so I could be wrong)
>that White has set up contradictory standards -- police cannot create
>a "predisposition," but "run-of-the-mill" sting operations are okay.
>[Ted Frank]

It seems to me (and I haven't read the opinion either, so I could be 
wrong) that the sting operation against this particular Midwestern pervert 
failed Justice White's test because he did not respond "promptly" to the
criminal opportunities which the government placed before him, and because
those opportunities, directed specifically at him as opposed to the public
at large, were "repeated."  

Do undercover drug enforcement agents *keep after* a suspected dope dealer
the way the undercover anti-child-porn agents *kept after* this fellow?
Do they ask him, "Aw, c'mon.  Are you *sure* you don't have any stuff
to sell us?"  Do they approach the same suspect repeatedly after he has
brushed them off?  If so, that is the very sort of activity that Justice
White calls "entrapment" in the child-porn case, and I think he is
correct in throwing out the case.  

					-- Matt Rosenblatt
                                        (matt@amsaa.brl.mil)

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