Opinion ID: 475514
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Jury Instructions Regarding Entrapment

Text: 16 Appellants next contend that the court improperly instructed the jury regarding their entrapment defense. Appellant Davis proposed a charge that would have instructed the jury to consider the several shifts, from government to defendant and back to the government, of the burdens of production and proof of various issues. Finding this proposed instruction unnecessarily confusing, the court instead issued the entrapment charge contained in the pattern jury instructions for this circuit. 17 This court previously has rejected the claim that an entrapment charge must detail the shifting burdens of production and proof inherent in the defense. United States v. Smith, 588 F.2d 111 (5th Cir.1979). Although appellants' proposed charge perhaps is not without academic value for its analysis of the shifting burdens of the entrapment defense, its intricacies are of little merit as a means of instructing a jury in the law to be applied. Once the entrapment defense is properly before the jury, all the jury need decide is whether the government proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was predisposed to commit the crime. See id. This the given charge did, simply and clearly.