Court Opinion

ID: 9727349
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:31:38.890794+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:36.548012
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion
Givan, J.
The majority relies on Gray v. State (1967), 249 Ind. 629, 231 N. E. 2d 793, 12 Ind. Dec. 218, and cases cited therein. I have no quarrel with the proposition of law stated in the Gray case. However, the facts in that case *420were quite different from the facts in the case at bar. In Gray this Court condemned the practice of police officers deliberately-creating a situation which might entice an otherwise innocent person into the commission of a crime thereby creating a situation through their own overt acts upon which they could make an arrest. In the Gray case the police officers gave an informant an amount of money and sent him to make a purchase of narcotics from a person of whom they had no information as to any previous trafficking in drugs. In the case at bar the police officer merely let it be known to the appellant that he was in the market for narcotics. It was the appellant who set in motion the activities which led to his arrest by volunteering the information that he had a source of narcotics, and it was the appellant who led the officers to that source and obtained the narcotics himself. In Gray the officers set up a situation of express solicitation on their part. In the case at bar the officer merely created an opportunity for the appellant to carry out his natural propensity to commit the crime. The mere creation of the opportunity to commit a crime is not entrapment. Smith v. U. S. (7th Cir. 1964), 337 F. 2d 450; Walker v. State (1970), 255 Ind. 65, 262 N. E. 2d 641, 23 Ind. Dec. 104.
In the case at bar the police officers obviously carefully observed the law as set out in the above cases so as not to be guilty of entrapment. The majority opinion has by the misapplication of the acknowledged law in Indiana to the facts in this case placed undeserved blame on good police officers for the necessity of a re-trial of this cause.
Having reviewed this and other errors assigned by the appellant, I find no reversible error in this case and would, therefore, dissent from the majority’s decision to reverse.
Note. — Reported in 281 N. E. 2d 803.