Opinion ID: 1267164
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Standard of Review: Entrapment Defense

Text: Our analysis of the standard of review must begin with the recognition that the only issue preserved for appeal was the failure of the trial court to enter a judgment of acquittal. A motion for judgment of acquittal challenges the sufficiency of the evidence. Franklin D. Cleckley, 2 Handbook on West Virginia Criminal Procedure 292 (2d ed.1993). What we have done today is retain a separate and distinct subjective test of entrapment and adopt a burden-shifting mechanism whereby after the defendant offers some competent evidence of inducement, the burden shifts to the State to prove the defendant's predisposition beyond a reasonable doubt. Because the State bears the burden of proving the defendant's predisposition to commit the offense, the defendant's challenge, in essence, strikes at the sufficiency of the State's evidence on the issue of predisposition. See United States v. Byrd, 31 F.3d 1329, 1335 (5th Cir.1994), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 115 S.Ct. 1432, 131 L.Ed.2d 313 (1995). Upon review, then, we will examine the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution, and will reverse only if no rational trier of fact could have found predisposition to exist beyond a reasonable doubt. See Syllabus Point 1, State v. Guthrie, 194 W.Va. 657, 461 S.E.2d 163 (1995); see also United States v. Jannotti, 673 F.2d 578, 598 (3d Cir.), cert. denied, 457 U.S. 1106, 102 S.Ct. 2906, 73 L.Ed.2d 1315 (1982); Jacobson v. United States, 503 U.S. 540, 112 S.Ct. 1535, 118 L.Ed.2d 174 (1992). 3.