[mikeash]

Entrapment is when you're coerced into committing a crime you otherwise wouldn't have committed. For example, if the police show up and say that they're going to arrest your relative unless you rob a certain store, then you rob the store and they arrest you for robbery, that would be entrapment. If they merely pose as a person interested in your criminal activity and get you to commit a crime, which you were happy to commit anyway, that's not entrapment.

The problem here isn't the sting operation, it's that it's a crime to help someone defeat a polygraph in the first place.

[song]

According to what I understood defeating the polygraph is not necessarily a crime. What is a crime is to "knowingly help someone lie to a federal agent". If the agents didn't give him any stories about a crime they committed, then he could have claimed that he didn't knowingly help them to lie since there was no lie that he knew about.

By having one of the agent talk about the cocaine smuggling or the other agent talk about sexual abuse, it made the case much stronger because it proved clearly that he was knowingly helping someone to lie to a federal agent since the lie had been made clear by the agents.

The reason I say that it's entrapment is that they've manipulated him into committing a crime by doing this.

One thing I'm not clear about American law is if, in this kind of cases, all records are given of the interactions between the agent and the defendant or not. If not and if the defendant's lawyer doesn't have access to the records, then it's very easy to use certain parts of the recordings to make a much stronger case than would be possible otherwise. Out of context quotes can incriminate people very easily. And in that case, depending on what would be hidden, it's entirely possible that he wouldn't have actually helped someone in a similar situation.

Now this is my interpretation based on what I understand, I'm not a lawyer and all that :-)...

[barking]

>Entrapment is when you're coerced into committing a crime you otherwise wouldn't have commit.

Coerced is the wrong word, induced is the correct one, and that's what happened here.

[mikeash]

I'm not sure I see the difference. I also don't see how it applies here. "Otherwise wouldn't have committed" is key. The guy did this stuff routinely, even advertised it. This isn't a crime he otherwise wouldn't have committed. It just shouldn't be illegal at all.

[DugFin]

"Coercion" is specifically the use of threats. "Inducement" is a broader category that includes other methods like begging, badgering, and wheedling.

[mikeash]

So offering someone a million dollars to commit a crime would qualify as inducement, but not coercion? Makes sense.

[JackFr]

What makes this fascinating to me is , since the undercover agents hadn't actually committed the crimes they told him, he wasn't, in fact, helping them lie to federal agents.

As the purported 'lie' was actually the truth, where is the crime?

[talmand]

Conspiracy. Intent goes a long way, especially in cases like this. Such as cases where FBI makes a fake bomb, ask suspect to flip this switch to arm it, ask suspect to place fake bomb at target, arrested for terrorism.