Opinion ID: 1267164
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Standard of Review: Outrageous Government Conduct

Text: When a defendant appeals a trial court's refusal to find as a matter of law that the government acted outrageously in violation of the defendant's due process rights, we will review that decision de novo to the extent that if there is insufficient evidence of outrageous government conduct so as to violate notions of fundamental fairness, shocking to the universal sense of justice, the ruling of the trial court will not be reversed. See United States v. Pedraza, 27 F.3d 1515, 1521 (10th Cir.), cert. denied, ___ U.S. ___, 115 S.Ct. 347, 130 L.Ed.2d 303 (1994). Any factual determinations made by the trial court in issuing its ruling on the claim of outrageous government conduct will be reviewed under a clearly erroneous standard. Having established the appropriate standards of review for both the entrapment defense and for a claim of outrageous government conduct, we now turn to an analysis of the facts in this case as measured against our legal principles on entrapment and outrageous government conduct. We are able to apply the legal principles announced in this opinion to the facts of this case because, as we have stated, we have not radically departed from our existing law, but simply divorced any inquiry into unconscionable or outrageous police conduct with a constitutional dimension from our entrapment jurisprudence. D.