Opinion ID: 1986216
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: sherman v. united states

Text: Twenty-six years later, in Sherman, supra, the Court reaffirmed the approach taken by the Sorrells majority. The majority in Sherman did not undertake a critical analysis of the Sorrells rationale, but rather rested its decision on prudential and stare decisis grounds. [6] Reiterating the importance of the predisposition inquiry, the Court explained that [t]o determine whether entrapment has been established, a line must be drawn between the trap for the unwary innocent and the trap for the unwary criminal. Id. at 372, 93 S.Ct. 1637. As in Sorrells, a significant group of justices offered a different view of the entrapment defense. Justice Frankfurter, joined by Justices Douglas, Harlan and Brennan, filed a separate opinion built on the foundation laid by Justice Roberts in Sorrells. The separate opinion criticized as sheer fiction the implied legislative intent theory underlying the majority rule. Sherman, supra, at 379, 78 S.Ct. 819. It next repeated Justice Roberts' policy attack on the majority view, suggesting that a defendant's past crimes should not forever outlaw the criminal and open him to police practices, aimed at securing his repeated conviction, from which the ordinary citizen is protected. Id. at 383, 78 S.Ct. 819. More importantly, Justice Frankfurter suggested a specific source of the Court's authority to regulate objectionable police conduct. In his view, the only legitimate basis for enforcing the entrapment defense was the Supreme Court's supervisory jurisdiction over the administration of criminal justice. Id. at 380-381, 78 S.Ct. 819. He opined that when courts refuse to convict an entrapped defendant, they do so as an exercise of a recognized jurisdiction to formulate and apply `proper standards for the enforcement of the federal criminal law in the federal courts.' Id. at 380, 78 S.Ct. 819, quoting McNabb v. United States, 318 U.S. 332, 341, 63 S.Ct. 608, 87 L.Ed. 819 (1943). [7] The formulation of such standards, he reasoned, does not in any way conflict with the statute the defendant has violated, or involve the initiation of a judicial policy disregarding or qualifying that framed by Congress, because Congress enacts criminal statutes with the presupposition that the courts will formulate the requisite standards for the administration of criminal justice. Sherman, supra at 381, 78 S.Ct. 819. Thus, a false choice is put when it is said that either the defendant's conduct does not fall within the statute or he must be convicted. Id. Finally, Justice Frankfurter proposed a specific, objective standard for identifying when entrapment occurs. Under his test, the police should act in such a manner as is likely to induce to the commission of crime only those persons ready and willing to commit further crimes should the occasion arise and not others who would normally avoid crime and through selfstruggle resist ordinary temptations. Id. at 383-384, 78 S.Ct. 819. This standard, he reasoned, draws directly on the fundamental intuition that led in the first instance to the outlawing of `entrapment' as a prosecutorial instrument. Essentially, the power of government is abused when employed to promote rather than detect crime. Id. at 384, 78 S.Ct. 819.