§ 6-15 Entrapment

• Library: South Carolina Requests to Charge - Criminal (SCBar) (2012 Ed.)

§ 6-15 Entrapment

The defendant in this case has pled the defense of entrapment.

Entrapment is defined as the conception and planning of an offense by an officer or other person working with law enforcement agents under some sort of arrangement and his procurement of its commission by one who would not have perpetrated it except for the trickery, persuasion, or fraud of the officer. Entrapment occurs where one is instigated, induced or lured by law enforcement, a law enforcement entity, or a person acting at the request or behest of law enforcement for the purpose of prosecution into the commission of a crime which he had otherwise no intention of committing.

The function of law enforcement is the prevention of crime and the apprehension of criminals. Manifestly, that function does not include the manufacturing of crime.

The entrapment defense consists of two elements:

(1) government inducement of the crime; and
(2) lack of predisposition on the part of the defendant to engage in the criminal conduct.

Predisposition, the principal element in the defense of entrapment, focuses upon whether the defendant was an unwary innocent or, instead, an unwary criminal who readily availed himself of the opportunity to perpetrate the crime. The defense of entrapment is not available to a defendant with a predisposition, independent of government inducement and influence, to commit the crime with which the defendant is presently charged.

The defense of entrapment has as its basis the fact that the law does not tolerate any person, particularly a law enforcement officer, generating in the mind of a person who is innocent of any criminal purpose the original intent to commit a crime, thus, entrapping such person into the commission of a crime which he would not have committed or even contemplated but for such inducement. Where a crime is person so entrapped, as his acts do not constitute a crime.

If the intent to commit the crime did not originate with the defendant and he was not carrying out his criminal purpose, but the crime was suggested by law enforcement, a law enforcement entity, or a person acting at the request or behest of law enforcement acting with the purpose of entrapping and causing the arrest of the defendant, then the defendant is not criminally liable for the acts so committed. However, the fact that a government official merely affords opportunities or facilities for the commission of the offense does not constitute entrapment. Entrapment occurs only...