Entrapment is an illegal act by law enforcement

On Behalf of | Aug 7, 2017 | blog |

Imagine that you’re involved in the drug scene with some friends. You don’t normally make purchases or sell drugs, but occasionally are there when they do. Oddly, someone tells you they want you to hand over some drugs to someone else to make an exchange.

You’re not familiar with the individual, but you decide that it’s not a bad idea. You can participate in the exchange and get paid, even though you have nothing to do with taking or selling the drugs yourself. As soon as you take and transfer the package into the hands of the buyer, he reveals that he’s a cop, and you’re under arrest.

Is this a legal arrest?

In this case, the criminal act wasn’t something you thought of on your own. Instead, another officer prompted you to take drugs that he was providing in order to sell them to another officer who was waiting to make an arrest.

Without the officers present, there’s a chance that you never would have gotten involved in the drug trade. You never would have had drugs in your possession, and you certainly wouldn’t have been selling them to someone else. The officers lured you into committing a crime with promises of money that you couldn’t pass up.

This is not a legal action. The officers participated in what is known as entrapment. Entrapment is when the officers encourage you to commit a crime and then arrest you for doing so.

How can you defend yourself against entrapment charges?

You’ll need to show that the officers encouraged you to commit the crime. They must have persuaded you to do so in some manner. You will also need to show that the idea of committing the crime came from the officers. If the officers provided the drugs to you, this is a good way to show that it was their intention to get you involved in a criminal act.

By showing that the officers were the ones who promoted the criminal act, you can defend yourself. It often possible to have such a case dismissed.

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