Origin Developed in American criminal law from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries onward.
Entrapment is a criminal law doctrine and defense under which a defendant who was induced by a law enforcement officer or agent to commit an offense they would not otherwise have committed may avoid conviction. It is generally defined as the conception and planning of an offense by an officer or agent, and the procurement of its commission by one who would not have perpetrated it except for the trickery, persuasion or fraud of that officer or agent; jurisdictions differ on whether the defendant or the prosecution bears the burden of proof once the defense is raised. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
Facts
Origin PeriodDeveloped in American criminal law from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries onward. 1 Core PrincipleA defendant induced to commit a crime by a law enforcement officer's trickery, persuasion or fraud, who would not otherwise have committed it, has a defense to the resulting charge. 1 Origin Period
Origin Period (category)19th Century (1800-1899) 1 Origin Period (category)20th Century (1900-1999) 1 Classification
Doctrine Category Connections
In Area Of Law
Entity-backed identity for the doctrine category value this doctrine already carries as an enum fact, resolved to a doctrine entity by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The enum fact itself stays on the entity unchanged.
In Legal System
Source Entrapment (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Entrapment (Wikipedia)
WikipediaDefinition section
the conception and planning of an offense by an officer or agent, and the procurement of its commission by one who would not have perpetrated it except for the trickery, persuasion or fraud of the officer or state agent.
- a law enforcement agent induces a person to commit a crime that the person would have otherwise been unlikely to commit
- In Legal System: Law of the United States
View the Source Frequently Asked Questions
What is entrapment as a defense?
Government inducement of a crime the person would otherwise have been unlikely or unwilling to commit.
Entrapment is a practice in which a law enforcement agent or an agent of the state induces a person to commit a crime that the person would have otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit.
How do the subjective and objective tests for entrapment differ?
The subjective test asks about the defendant's predisposition; the objective test asks about the government's conduct.
The subjective test looks at the defendant's state of mind; entrapment can be claimed if the defendant had no predisposition to commit the crime. The objective test looks instead at the government's conduct; entrapment occurs when the actions of government officers would usually have caused a normally law-abiding person to commit a crime.
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