Opinion ID: 202700
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Understanding the Entrapment Defense

Text: 46 In federal criminal cases, the entrapment defense is neither a doctrine of constitutional dimension, nor a defense specifically granted by statute. See United States v. Russell, 411 U.S. 423, 432-33, 93 S.Ct. 1637, 36 L.Ed.2d 366 (1973). Rather, the defense has its origins in an inference about congressional intent. Sherman v. United States, 356 U.S. 369, 372, 78 S.Ct. 819, 2 L.Ed.2d 848 (1958); see also United States v. Gendron, 18 F.3d 955, 961 (1st Cir.1994). The Supreme Court has explained that the function of law enforcement is the prevention of crime and the apprehension of criminals. Manifestly, that function does not include the manufacturing of crime. . . . Congress could not have intended that its statutes were to be enforced by tempting innocent persons into violations. Sherman, 356 U.S. at 372, 78 S.Ct. 819. A successful entrapment defense requires that there be a reasonable doubt on both prongs of a two-pronged test. 47 The first prong necessitates a showing of improper government inducement. See Gamache, 156 F.3d at 9. This aspect of the defense plainly seeks to deter improper government conduct. Gendron, 18 F.3d at 961. Indeed, a defendant cannot claim entrapment when government conduct played no causal role in the defendant's inducement. See Sherman, 356 U.S. at 372, 78 S.Ct. 819. Nevertheless, the entrapment defense only deters government misbehavior in cases where the defendant would otherwise be law-abiding. Gendron, 18 F.3d at 962. That is because the second prong requires that the defendant have a lack of predisposition to commit the charged offense. See id.; see also Sorrells v. United States, 287 U.S. 435, 448, 53 S.Ct. 210, 77 L.Ed. 413 (1932). 48 These two prongs, and the policy concerns behind them, play important roles in delimiting the scope of the entrapment defense. But they are not the only considerations that matter. This court and the Supreme Court have taken account of the practical problems facing law enforcement, particularly in the prosecution of victimless crimes where significant governmental involvement in illegal activities is often required. Bradley, 820 F.2d at 6-8; see also Hampton v. United States, 425 U.S. 484, 494-95 & n. 7, 96 S.Ct. 1646, 48 L.Ed.2d 113 (1976) (Powell, J., concurring in the judgment); Russell, 411 U.S. at 432, 93 S.Ct. 1637; Gendron, 18 F.3d at 961. We must be mindful that the defense of entrapment . . . [does] not . . . give the federal judiciary a `chancellor's foot' veto over law enforcement practices of which it [does] not approve. Russell, 411 U.S. at 435, 93 S.Ct. 1637. 49 These various considerations are sometimes in tension with one another, and we have treated the resolution of questions about the scope of the entrapment defense as essentially exercises in balancing. Indeed, in Bradley we weighed the competing factors and realized that we ultimately faced a question of social policy. 820 F.2d at 8; cf. United States v. Hollingsworth, 27 F.3d 1196, 1198 (7th Cir.1994) (en banc) (characterizing entrapment as a common law doctrine). 50 We synthesize the key facts on which we must balance competing concerns in this case. It is beyond dispute that an individual like Previte, hired by the government as an informant, is a government agent for entrapment purposes. See Sherman, 356 U.S. at 373-75, 78 S.Ct. 819. Nor can there be any dispute that Merlino's order to Luisi, with its implied threat of physical harm or other serious retribution, could be found by a jury to be improper inducement if attributed to the government. See Gendron, 18 F.3d at 961; Bradley, 820 F.2d at 7. 51 It is also clear that Luisi's case does not fit the pattern of what has come to be known as vicarious entrapment. In vicarious entrapment an unknowing middleman merely tells the defendant about an inducement that the government had used to target the middleman. See United States v. Valencia, 645 F.2d 1158, 1168-69 (2d Cir.1980) (recognizing the vicarious entrapment defense). Here, the target was not the middleman Merlino, but the defendant Luisi. Further, a jury could find that Merlino had himself threatened Luisi. This was not a case where Merlino repeated to Luisi a threat that Previte had made against Merlino. Indeed, Previte did not threaten Merlino at all. 52 Instead, this case is much closer to what has been called derivative entrapment, a situation in which a government agent uses the unsuspecting middleman as a means of passing on an inducement to the defendant. 2 W. LaFave, Substantive Criminal Law, § 9.8(a), at 93 (2d ed.2003). 10 Yet even within this category, further refinement is required. 53 We have before us a situation in which a jury could find that Previte specifically targeted Luisi, and then induced Merlino to give an order to Luisi when Merlino might not have otherwise done so. But Previte's inducement of Merlino does not appear to have itself been improper. Previte simply helped set up a drug transaction, explained to Merlino that Merlino would profit from the transaction's execution, and then encouraged Merlino to order Luisi's assistance. Cf. Gendron, 18 F.3d at 961-62 (explaining that improper inducement goes beyond providing an ordinary `opportunity to commit a crime,' and providing examples (quoting Jacobson v. United States, 503 U.S. 540, 550, 112 S.Ct. 1535, 118 L.Ed.2d 174 (1992))). A jury would presumably find that Previte merely provided an ordinary inducement to Merlino; it was Merlino's inducement of Luisi that a jury could find improper. 54 This is an unusual entrapment situation. Under the original, correct instructions given, it is evident that the jury was considering the possibility that Merlino had put excessive pressure on Luisi, and that the jurors were unsure whether Merlino's order could be considered government persuasion or inducement because the contact between Merlino and Luisi resulted from the government agent Previte. The effect of the court's response was the same as if it had instructed the jury, as a matter of law, that Merlino's order could not be considered government inducement or persuasion. We must decide whether the issue was correctly removed from the jury's consideration.