Court Opinion

ID: 9488170
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:38:10.41208+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:44.029959
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
with whom ILANA DIAMOND ROVNER, Circuit Judge, joins, concurring:
While it is incorrect to condemn Illinois’s view of the entrapment defense as unconstitutional, the majority opinion goes too far in justifying Illinois’s rule. I do not agree that entrapment is necessarily a defense for “criminals.” Instead, the point behind the defense is that but for government inducement, no criminal motive would have arisen. In Sorrells v. United States, 287 U.S. 435, 53 S.Ct. 210, 77 L.Ed. 413 (1932), the Supreme Court’s first recognition of the entrapment defense, the Court said:
The defense is available, not in the view that the accused though guilty may go free, but that the Government cannot be permitted to contend that he is guilty of a crime where the government officials are the instigators of his conduct.
287 U.S. at 452, 53 S.Ct. at 216. The defense of entrapment, therefore, exists for the purpose of demonstrating that “the criminal design originates with the officials of the Government, [when] they implant in the mind of an innocent person the disposition to commit the alleged offense.” Id. at 442, 53 S.Ct. at *503212-13. It is decidedly not a defense ordinarily available to “criminals.” Nor does the defense permit a court to consider a defendant a “criminal” merely because he has committed a prohibited act.
The view that in entrapment cases the government is the source of the criminal motive has been reaffirmed again and again. See Sherman v. United States, 356 U.S. 369, 373, 78 S.Ct. 819, 821, 2 L.Ed.2d 848 (1958) (“a line must be drawn between the trap for the unwary innocent and the trap for the unwary criminal”); United States v. Russell, 411 U.S. 423, 436, 93 S.Ct. 1637, 1645, 36 L.Ed.2d 366 (1973) (“when the Government’s deception actually implants the criminal design in the mind of the defendant ... the defense of entrapment comes into play”); Jacobson v. United States, 503 U.S. 540, 548, 112 S.Ct. 1535, 1540, 118 L.Ed.2d 174 (“Government agents may not originate a criminal design, implant in an innocent person’s mind the disposition to commit a criminal act_”).
This aspect of entrapment in fact gives rise to the requirement that a defendant who is predisposed to commit the crime may not avail himself of the defense. See Sorrells, 287 U.S. at 451, 53 S.Ct. at 216. This Court has only recently endorsed this requirement in United States v. Hollingsworth, 27 F.3d 1196, 1199 (7th Cir.1994) (en banc), where we held that mere willingness to commit a crime is not sufficient to negate the availability of the entrapment defense. 27 F.3d at 1199. Instead, the “defendant must be so situated by reason of previous training or experience or occupation or acquaintances that it is likely that if the government had not induced him to commit the crime some criminal would have done so.” 27 F.3d at 1200. In other words, defendants that society regards as “criminal” will not likely be able to avail themselves of the entrapment defense (at least insofar as they seek to use that defense in an area in which they have a past of criminal conduct).
By the same token, the defense does not allow us to regard a defendant as “criminal” merely because he engaged in a prohibited act. Hollingsworth teaches as much by demanding a showing of predisposition over and above willingness. 27 F.3d at 1199 (“Their willingness to commit the crimes to which the government invited them cannot be decisive. Predisposition requires more.”). The defense itself thus holds blameless one who lacks a criminal predisposition, despite his having engaged in a prohibited act. Because the defendant would not have engaged in the prohibited act unless induced by the government, he is not a threat to society meriting the attention of the criminal law. United States v. Hollingsworth, 9 F.3d 593, 598 (7th Cir.1993) (panel opinion).