Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: Entrapment

Probably not. Entrapment is a difficult defense to raise. You will not be able to successfully claim entrapment unless you have a skilled privately retained attorney. To win on a claim of entrapment, the circumstances must be such that the defendant would not have committed the crime but for the actions of the police. Some drug busts do constitute entrapment, the classic case is where the defendant, not otherwise involved in drug trafficking, is approached by two separate undercover officers. One offers to sell a package of drugs for $1000, another says she wants to buy the same quantity of drugs for $1250. The innocent defendant becomes tempted to act as middleperson for a quick $250 (but instead is sentenced to 20 years as a "drug kingpin"). In your case, the fact that methamphetamine was sold on five separate occasions suggests that the defendant was predisposed to do the drug deals and was not entrapped. But maybe there are other facts you didn't include in your question.

Re: Entrapment

I generally agree with Mr. Stone's analysis, but not entirely. Proving entrapment requires more than proving that the police manufactured an opportunity for the defendant to commit a crime. It also requires proving that the defendant would not have committed the crime if the police hadn't pressured him into doing so.

The basic idea is that even law-abiding people can only resist so much pressure before they give in and break the law. Police could probably induce just about anyone to commit a crime if they work at it long enough and hard enough.

Most people who see an opportunity to benefit by commiting a crime will resist the temptation, but there is only so much resistance any of us can offer. With enough skillfully-applied pressure, almost anyone could be persuaded to break the law. Police are allowed to tempt suspects but are not allowed to chip away at their resistance until they give in. When they do so and then arrest the suspect, they have entrapped him.

The situation Mr. Stone describes does not strike me as entrapment because all the police are doing is providing an opportunity for the suspect to commit a crime. They are not pressuring him into doing it. If we add to his hypothetical something like a series of phone calls from undercover officers repeatedly urging the suspect to make the deal or threatening to harm him if he does not, then he would have a much better chance of proving entrapment.

The case you describe does not sound at all like entrapment, at least based upon the very limited facts you have given us. Posing as a drug buyer to see who is selling does not qualify as entrapment, and doing it five times to the same person is no closer to entrapment than doing it once. This defendant was wiling to break the law and did so five times when given the opportunity, but nothing you have said suggests to me that the police overcame his resistance to make him do it.