this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2024
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entrapment is also illegal here in the US? It's legal to "bait" someone here though. you can sell drugs, and then get someone to buy them from you without influencing them, then arrest them, that's perfectly legal.
like im pretty sure it's a legally protected thing in the constitution?
Governements can interpret laws however they want but i am pretty sure that some of that baiting is considered entrapment.
Feeling tempted to buy drugs is not a crime, acting on it is. If the undercover cop wasn't selling they may not have gotten tempted at that exact point of weakness.
Realistically it probably depends more on your lawyer and the jury then the letter of law though. Thats seems The same anywhere.
yeah, and they're arresting the people who buy the drugs, not the people who maybe want to buy drugs. Thats the only way you can stick a charge.
I was not still not convinced that did not count, so i did some research. In the example your given, not having the predisposition to buy drugs appears a valid defence.
"In the United States, two competing tests exist for determining whether entrapment has taken place, known as the "subjective" and "objective" tests.
The "subjective" test looks at the defendant's state of mind; entrapment can be claimed if the defendant had no "predisposition" to commit the crime.
The "objective" test looks instead at the government's conduct; entrapment occurs when the actions of government officers would usually have caused a normally law-abiding person to commit a crime."
In Germany its a lot more strict
"In German law, it is normally forbidden to induce or persuade someone to commit a crime or to attempt to do so. However, the German Federal Court of Justice has held that entrapment by undercover police agents is not a reason to stay the case per se."
And then there's the UK which is vague as fuck?.
"The main authority on entrapment in England and Wales, held to be equally applicable in Scotland, is the decision of the House of Lords in R. v. Loosely (2001). A stay is granted if the conduct of the state was so seriously improper that the administration of justice was brought into disrepute. In deciding whether to grant a stay, the Court will consider, as a useful guide, whether the police did more than present the defendant with an unexceptional opportunity to commit a crime."
And then there is the european convention on humans rights which appears more option then law.
"Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights has been interpreted as forbidding prosecution of acts induced by undercover officers. In the case of Teixeira de Castro v Portugal, the European Court of Human Rights found that the prosecution of a man for drugs offences after being asked by undercover police to procure heroin was a breach of the defendant's rights under Article 6 as the investigating officers's actions "went beyond those of undercover agents because they instigated the offence and there is nothing to suggest that without their intervention it would have been committed."
yeah that pretty much checks out for me. It's one of those weird things in the US where we have pretty strict fundamentally enshrined constitutional rights where this would likely overstep so it's a tried and true space.
Also helps that cops do actually end up doing stings like this pretty frequently. We see similar things with "hitman for hire" plots a lot. Though drugs are probably one the more slimy variants of this. There should be enough enshrined rights to prevent significant abuses of power though.