Opinion ID: 1992950
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: the causation prong of the objective test

Text: With regard to the first point, Justice BRICKLEY in Jamieson offered the perplexing statement that courts applying the objective approach use the state of mind of the accused as a factor. When applying the objective test, consideration is given to the willingness of the accused to commit the act weighed against how a normally law-abiding person would react in similar circumstances. Id. at 74. This troubling dicta was inconsistent with Justice BRICKLEY'S otherwise sound exposition of the objective test, which, of course, is designed to shift [the] focus from the defendant's state of mind to the conduct of the law enforcement officers. Id. at 72; see generally id. at 72-74. It is the subjective test, not the objective test, which focuses (at least in significant part) on the willingness of the accused to commit the act. As Justice BRICKLEY correctly stated, a key purpose of the objective test ... is to prohibit police conduct that is, in an objective sense ( not in individual cases ), likely to encourage the commission of crime that would not otherwise have been committed. Id. at 76 (emphasis added). Justice BRICKLEY settled in Jamieson on the following formulation of the objective entrapment test: The facts of each case must be examined to determine whether, under the circumstances, the governmental activity would induce a hypothetical person not ready and willing to commit the crime to engage in criminal activity. Id. at 80. As I noted in Jamieson, [t]he term `ready and willing to commit the crime' ... does not necessarily require that a court applying this objective test look to the state of mind of the accused. Id. at 94. Quite the contrary: A careful reading of Justice BRICKLEY'S own formulation indicates that the court is not permitted to consider whether the defendant at bar was ready and willing to commit the crime. Rather, the court considers only the average hypothetical person not ready and willing to commit the crime. Properly understood in light of the true nature of the objective test, I believe Justice BRICKLEY'S formulation essentially asks whether the police conduct at issue is, in an objective sense, the kind that would generally cause the average, hypothetical person to engage in criminal activity that such a person would not otherwise have engaged in. Unfortunately, the ready and willing to commit the crime language has, in my view, sown confusion and lent itself to misinterpretation. The language seems to offer an ever-present temptation to embark down the forbidden path of considering whether the particular defendant at bar was ready and willing to commit the crime, thus in effect adopting the subjective test's focus on individual predisposition. Thus, in this case, Justice BRICKLEY begins by emphasizing, correctly, that his Jamieson analysis hinged ... on whether the police conduct in question would induce or cause a hypothetical person to engage in criminal activity. Ante, p 54 (emphasis in original). And yet my colleague ends up concluding that a court should  avoid dealing with hypothetical situations, trying to identify what a `normal' person is and what a `normal' person does. We therefore conclude that a test allowing evaluation of the defendant's circumstances, in light of an otherwise law-abiding disposition, is more in keeping with the purpose of the entrapment defense. Id., p 56 (emphasis added). The temptation to permit consideration of defendant Juillet's individual circumstances is great because it so happens that defendant Juillet presents a sympathetic portrait of an unsophisticated twenty-year-old high school dropout who was a drug user, had a low IQ, and was on welfare. See BRICKLEY, J., ante, pp 51, 67. Those factors do not generally constitute a legal excuse for criminal acts, however, and are, I believe, irrelevant to a proper application of the objective entrapment test. Whether Juillet was illegally entrapped depends not on whether he, as an individual, was exceptionally vulnerable to entrapment or to the temptations of crime generally (although he undoubtedly was), but on whether the police conduct was so exceptionally reprehensible that (under Justice BRICKLEY'S own formulation) it posed the objective threat of causing the average hypothetical person (not just Juillet individually) to commit crimes when such a person would not otherwise have done so. [2] A related source of potential confusion arises from the frequent substitution of the phrase normally law-abiding person for person not ready and willing to commit the crime. See Jamieson, 436 Mich 74 (opinion of BRICKLEY, J.). If literally applied, this language would suggest that the entrapment defense would not be available to a defendant, like Juillet, who was not previously law-abiding (by his own admission, Juillet was a frequent possessor and user of drugs), but who may not otherwise have become involved with a higher level of criminal behavior, such as drug dealing. But the entrapment test cannot properly be so limited. As I discuss in part II(A), I fully agree with Justice BRICKLEY'S ultimate conclusion that Juillet was entrapped largely because the police conduct at issue posed an objective likelihood of causing the average hypothetical drug user to escalate his activities to drug dealing, when that would probably not otherwise have occurred. See BRICKLEY, J., ante, p 68. I do not think, however, that this conclusion requires consideration of the defendant's individual circumstances. Rather, all it requires is that the court focus more narrowly on the specific criminal activity or level of activity for which the defendant is charged, and ask whether the police conduct posed an objective risk of causing a hypothetical person who had not yet reached that level of criminal activity (even if he was not a spotlessly law-abiding person) to do so. This aspect of entrapment analysis was noted eighteen years ago by Justice WILLIAMS in Turner: In my opinion it would be well to construe the phrase `person otherwise innocent' more narrowly to refer to a person otherwise innocent of the specific type of crime charged. 390 Mich 25 (WILLIAMS, J., concurring in reversal). [3]