Entrapment is a defense to a crime. Its purpose is to deter police misconduct. If a police officer or someone working with a police officer induces you to commit a crime through impermissible conduct, you may have an entrapment defense.

What Is Entrapment?

• Entrapment usually occurs when an officer or an agent induces you to commit a crime that you normally would not commit.
• The police officer (or agent) must have used trickery, persuasion, or fraud to compel you to commit the crime.
• The crime must be planned by the police entirely, without your contemplation.

Even if you are allowed to raise an entrapment defense, whether it will succeed still remains doubtful because rarely does an entrapment defense work.

Two Different Approaches

• Objective test – A minority of jurisdictions follow the objective test which focuses on the conduct of the law enforcement agent. The question asked is: Would a normal law-abiding citizen have been induced or persuaded by the police officer's outrageous tactics?
  
  
• Subjective test – The majority of jurisdictions, including federal courts, apply the subjective test for entrapment. For this test, the main inquiry is: Would the particular defendant have committed the crime but for the conduct of the police officer? This test focuses on the individual defendant's state of mind. A court or jury may look at the defendant's history and whether the defendant had a pre-existing criminal intent.

Impermissible Police Conduct
There are 3 situations in which an entrapment defense will succeed:

• Pressuring a person to commit a crime by unreasonable pressure or outrageous conduct.
• Appealing to a person's sympathies or sense of friendship.
• Making the crime unusually attractive by offering an exorbitant amount of money or promising the crime will go undetected.

Police officers may sometimes attempt to make reasonable assurances that you are not being set up, so beware. This may or may not help you in your defense of entrapment.