Court Opinion

ID: 9594458
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 00:30:07.612134+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:23.549536
License: Public Domain

VERNON R. PEDERSON, Surrogate Judge,
concurring specially.
This court has not been given much information relating to the police justification for “targeting” Rummer. Because the North Dakota entrapment law employs the “objective” theory, it is not unusual that we learn so little about Rummer’s “predisposition” to commit any crime. Rummer, under our law, was entitled to be treated as a “normally law-abiding person” because he raised the entrapment defense. NDCC § 12.1-05-11(2).
I believe, however, that ordinarily the police can and must use dirty tricks to trap “predisposed” traffickers in illicit drugs. I agree that police, as a matter of law, should not be permitted to use confiscated substances to induce a “normally law-abiding person” to commit a crime.
In State v. Folk, 278 N.W.2d 410, 414 (N.D.1979), we said:
“No doubt a meritorious ease can be made for the proposition that a defense which diverts the juror’s attention away from the defendant and onto the police is designed to benefit a professional criminal, but is a detriment to a beginner who may be gullible to the wiles of a worldly and conniving, confidence-type, undercover agent.”
I believe that it is time for the legislature to take a second look at the entrapment *446statute and redesign it to benefit normally law-abiding persons” and give police authority to engage the “predisposed” professional criminal in a battle of “no holds barred.”