Court Opinion

ID: 9431222
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:31:38.13804+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:27.478222
License: Public Domain

Justice Scalia,
concurring in the judgment.
I concur in the judgment of the Court because in my view the defense of entrapment will rarely be genuinely inconsistent with the defense on the merits, and when genuine inconsistency exists its effect in destroying the defendant’s credibility will suffice to protect the interests of justice.
The typical case presenting the issue before us here is one in which the defendant introduces evidence to the effect that he did not commit the unlawful acts, or did not commit them with the requisite unlawful intent, and also introduces evidence to show his lack of predisposition and inordinate government inducement. There is nothing inconsistent in these showings. The inconsistency alleged by the government is a purely formal one, which arises only if entrapment is defined to require not only (1) inordinate government inducement to commit a crime, (2) directed at a person not predisposed to commit the crime, but also (3) causing that person to commit the crime. If the third element is added to the definition, counsel’s argument to the jury cannot claim entrapment without admitting the crime. But I see no reason why the third *68element is essential, unless it is for the very purpose of rendering the defense unavailable without admission of the crime. Surely it does not add anything of substance to the findings the jury must make, since findings of (1) inordinate inducement plus (2) lack of predisposition will almost inevitably produce a conclusion of (3) causality. To be sure, entrapment cannot be available as a defense unless a crime by the object of the entrapment is established, since if there is no crime there is nothing to defend against; but in that sense all affirmative defenses assume commission of the crime.
My point is not that entrapment must be defined to exclude element (3). Whether it is or not, since that element seems to me unnecessary to achieve the social policy fostered by the defense I am not willing to declare the defense unavailable when it produces the formal inconsistency of the defendant’s simultaneously denying the crime and asserting entrapment which assumes commission of the crime. I would not necessarily accept such formal inconsistency for other defenses, where the element contradicted is a functionally essential element of the defense.
Of course in the entrapment context, as elsewhere, the defendant’s case may involve genuine, noniovmsl inconsistency. The defendant might testify, for example, that he was not in the motel room where the illegal drugs changed hands, and that the drugs were pressed upon him in the motel room by agents of the government. But that kind of genuine inconsistency here, as elsewhere, is self-penalizing. There is nothing distinctive about entrapment that justifies a special prophylactic rule.