Opinion ID: 1367509
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Then, Generally, Where Are We In Entrapment?

Text: Consequently, we have the subjective test; the subjective test as supplemented by the outrageous government conduct doctrine; and, the objective test. There is a fourth approach specifically detailed in the Florida case of Cruz v. State, 465 So.2d 516 (Fla.), cert. denied 473 U.S. 905, 105 S.Ct. 3527, 87 L.Ed.2d 652 (1985). The test was derived from New Jersey state law development, and is now found in other states, in a less defined fashion, for example, New Mexico and perhaps Utah. It is the construction of a principle which considers the entire circumstance, both the conduct of the police and of the targeted criminal. This approach has aspects of the philosophy of due process incorporated in the totality of the circumstances examination. The result is that no need for the super-ameliorative concept of outrageous governmental conduct remains. In effect, this is a combination of the objective and the subjective test approaches. An interesting analysis, for evaluation of the most recent United States Supreme Court decision, Jacobson v. United States, ___ U.S. ___, 112 S.Ct. 1535, 118 L.Ed.2d 174 (1992), is provided by United States v. Beal, 961 F.2d 1512 (10th Cir.1992). The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals recognized: `Law enforcement officials go too far when they implant in the mind of an innocent person the disposition to commit the alleged offense and induce its commission in order that they may prosecute.' Beal, 961 F.2d at 1517 (quoting Jacobson, ___ U.S. at ___, 112 S.Ct. at 1536 and Sorrells, 287 U.S. at 442, 53 S.Ct. at 213). The court held a police agent's original inducement for a drug transaction provided the motive for the criminal acts charged. Beal, 961 F.2d at 1517. We are left then with a question of whether Jacobson and its progeny, Beal, represent a federal trend toward the amalgam of Cruz. The language of Jacobson suggests the emerging federal trend. In Jacobson, ___ U.S. at ___ _ ___, 112 S.Ct. at 1537-38, a Nebraska farmer who had once ordered two magazines and a brochure from a California adult bookstore was targeted by federal authorities investigating illegal receipt through the mails of sexually explicit depictions of children. At the time Jacobson ordered the original materials, no violation of federal or state law occurred. His name, however, was on a mailing list seized by federal authorities who, for two and one-half years, continued to solicit Jacobson to make another, now illegal, purchase. Justice White, writing for the majority, said the government failed to prove that Jacobson was predisposed to break the law before the government, by its own admission, induced Jacobson to commit the crime. Id. at ___, 112 S.Ct. at 1541. Justice White relied on Sorrells' creative activity precedent to argue that the court must first consider the governmental conduct in entrapment cases as part of the predisposition determination. Id. at ___ _ ___ n. 2, 112 S.Ct. at 1540-41 n. 2. There is yet a fifth application suggested for entrapment defenses. It has aspects of the objective, but is in reality an exception to the subjective. The standard was most currently articulated in the initial panel reversal of Jacobson, which was then reconsidered en banc, United States v. Jacobson, 916 F.2d 467 (8th Cir.1990), cert. granted ___ U.S. ___, 111 S.Ct. 1618, 113 L.Ed.2d 716 (1991), rev'd on other grounds ___ U.S. ___, 112 S.Ct. 1535, 118 L.Ed.2d 174 (1992). It is this second appellate reversal, confirming conviction, which was itself then reversed in Jacobson, ___ U.S. ___, 112 S.Ct. 1535. This standard directed that governmental suspicion of defendant's predisposition is a prerequisite for solicitation. Terri L. Chambers, Note, United States v. Jacobson: A Call For Reasonable Suspicion of Criminal Activity as a Threshold Limitation on Government Sting Operations, 44 Ark.L.Rev. 493, 505 (1991). That author found a source for the reasonable suspicion criteria in the first federal entrapment case reversal. Woo Wai v. United States, 223 F. 412 (9th Cir.1915). See also Rothman v. United States, 270 F. 31 (2nd Cir.), cert. denied 254 U.S. 652, 41 S.Ct. 149, 65 L.Ed. 458 (1920). A similar thesis and identical recognition is accorded in Maura F.J. Whelan, Lead Us Not Into (Unwarranted) Temptation: A Proposal To Replace The Entrapment Defense With A Reasonable-Suspicion Requirement, 133 U.Pa.L.Rev. 1193 (1985). Clearly entrapment is a facet of a broader problem. Along with illegal search and seizures, wire tapping, false arrest, illegal detention and the third degree, it is a type of lawless law enforcement. They all spring from common motivations. Each is a substitute for skillful and scientific investigation. Each is condoned by the sinister sophism that the end, when dealing with known criminals or the criminal classes, justifies the employment of illegal means. The Supreme Court has responded more or less effectively in curbing illegal search and seizures, illegal detention, and wiretapping by federal officers and third degree practices by state as well as federal police officers. It has occasionally been suggested that entrapment is sustainable as a doctrine on the same constitutional grounds as the search and seizure and the confession cases. It has been held, however, that the law forbidding conviction by entrapment methods has no affinity with legal questions concerning the admissibility of testimony for no constitutional right of the accused has been violated; and the question is, not as to the admissibility of evidence, but as to the validity of an asserted defense to crime. Donnelly, supra, 60 Yale L.Rev. at 1111 (quoting Sorrells v. United States, 57 F.2d 973, 978 (4th Cir.), cert. granted 287 U.S. 584, 53 S.Ct. 19, 77 L.Ed. 511, rev'd 287 U.S. 435, 53 S.Ct. 210, 77 L.Ed. 413 (1932)) (footnotes omitted). The historical Wyoming test of creative activity almost exactly fits the implanting and indoctrinating terminology of both Sorrells, 287 U.S. 435, 53 S.Ct. 210 and Jacobson, ___ U.S. ___, 112 S.Ct. 1535. It is clearly apparent that even if the Wyoming Supreme Court is determined to continue from Janski v. State, 538 P.2d 271 (Wyo. 1975) to the future with some character of this subjective test, the adaptation provided by the present majority complies neither with prior Wyoming precedent nor with current federal law. In Com. v. Thompson, 382 Mass. 379, 416 N.E.2d 497, 500 (1981), that court, another subjective jurisdiction, stated by reference to Sorrells, that the defense arises only if the criminal conduct was the product of the `creative activity' of the law enforcement officers or agents   . The majority decision in this case clearly does not follow historical Wyoming precedent. [10]