Opinion ID: 2215444
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Entrapment instruction.

Text: Defendant claimed entrapment in the commission of the offense, alleging informant's entreaties and the overpowering $200 offer for the six ounces of marijuana defendant usually bought for $160 per pound. Trial court's jury instruction, which attempted to follow the objective test laid down in State v. Mullen, 216 N.W.2d 375 (Iowa 1974), provided in relevant part: Entrapment occurs when a law enforcement agent induces the commission of an offense, using persuasion or other means likely to cause normally law-abiding persons to commit the offense. Conduct merely affording a person an opportunity to commit an offense does not constitute entrapment.    The law permits officers of the government to afford opportunities to citizens to commit a crime. They may employ artifice and stratagems to catch persons engaged in criminal enterprise, but they cannot implant in the minds of innocent persons the disposition to commit a crime and induce its commission in order that they may prosecute. The test is the effect of the police or their agent's inducements upon an average law-abiding person's mind.   . (Emphasis supplied.) Defendant, objecting to that portion of the instruction above emphasized, employed the following language: The reason is that I think it is a difficult area to give an instruction on. As the Court says, there really isn't one set out in Mullen, but I think just by using that word disposition in there to commit a crime we are getting into that subjective area; and I think this is hard to do in an instruction. I understand the Court's problem on this, trying to set it out so that it sets forth the law accurately. But I think that gets back into that subjective type of test, and may be confusing and misleading to the jury, the way I am reading it, anyway. In Mullen, supra, 216 N.W.2d at 381, we rejected the subjective test for the reason, inter alia, It has the potential of creating jury-confusing instructions, in which the element of intent required for conviction must be determined amid a welter of catchphrase concepts: `innocent person', `origin of intent', `previous disposition', and `predisposition. In the instruction before us disposition is not used in the sense it was used in the uniform instruction condemned in Mullen. That instruction provided, Entrapment means    that the defendant had no previous disposition or intention to violate the law   . Mullen, supra at 379. The instruction now before us provided [They] cannot implant    the disposition to commit a crime and induce its commission in order that they may prosecute. The focus here is on police conduct which might implant the disposition to commit the offense, not on the defendant's predisposition to commit it. The added phrase innocent persons was unfortunate but defendant directed no specific objection to it. Rather he turned the attention of the court to the word disposition, which we have already examined. As used here, innocent persons may be equated with the phrase normally law abiding persons found elsewhere in the instruction and approved in Mullen. We do not find here the wholly inconsistent mix of subjective and objective tests condemned in State v. Leins, 234 N.W.2d 645, 648-649 (Iowa 1975). While we do not approve of the phrase innocent persons we conclude, considering all of the language in the instruction, it would not mislead the jury. We find no reversible error and the case is affirmed. AFFIRMED.