Criminal Justice: To Trap a Thief

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It is not unusual for a defendant to claim that he was trapped into committing a crime. Often he is speaking the truth, at least by his own lights. Law enforcement officers regularly "solicit" criminal activity by playing up to homosexuals, using decoy letters to trap postal thieves, making narcotics "buys," and getting their pockets picked. Entrapment, in fact, was the chief defense in a trial that closed in Manhattan last week. The case concerned the three men who were arrested last February in a bizarre conspiracy to blow up the Statue of Liberty (TIME, Feb. 26).

Two of the trio, Robert Collier and Walter Bowe, claimed that the idea for the crime came from another man, Robert Wood, who later turned out to be an undercover detective. (Another member of the group, Michelle Duclos, a French Canadian, pleaded guilty and got a five-year jail sentence.) The defense argued, in effect, that the whole affair was Detective Wood's idea; if he had not conned them into securing 30 sticks of dynamite and working out the details of the proposed sabotage, there would not have been any conspiracy.

Abuse of Authority. Many jurists have long been fascinated by the entrapment defense. Most agree that there is a fine balance to be kept on that score. Is the defendant the sort of person who might reasonably have been expected to commit the crime without solicitation? But should not the court acquit the defendant regardless of criminal predisposition? Even if he were not predisposed to it but was seduced into committing the crime, is he not as guilty as if he had thought of it on his own?

These questions came before the Supreme Court in 1932, in Sorrells v. U.S. A man named Martin went to call on Sorrells, an old war buddy who was suspected of dealing in moonshine whisky. Martin wanted some booze. Sorrells said that he "did not fool with whisky." After repeated requests, Sorrells brought out the liquor—whereupon Old War Buddy Martin, who was also an old Prohibition agent, arrested him. Sorrells was convicted, and a circuit court affirmed the decision. In reversing the conviction, the Supreme Court said: "Congress could not have intended that its statutes were to be enforced by tempting innocent persons into violations. Such a gross abuse of authority for detecting and punishing crime deserves the severest condemnations."

Stealth & Strategy. In a similar case that reached the Supreme Court in 1958 (Sherman v. U.S.), a narcotics addict "on the cure" sold drugs to an informer only after repeated pleas for help. The court called that entrapment too: "The power of Government is abused and directed to an end for which it was not constituted when employed to promote rather than detect crime and to bring about the downfall of those who, left to themselves, might well have obeyed the law."