What is police entrapment?
Simply put, entrapment refers to a legal defense where a person commits a crime solely because he was actively pressured by the police to do it. Each state has its own statutes and case law dealing with this issue. Under the New York state law, for example, entrapment is an affirmative defense when a person is pressured by the police to commit a crime just for the purpose of arresting him, and when the methods used by the police are such as to create “a substantial risk that the offense would be committed by a person not otherwise disposed to commit it” (emphasis added). (The New York State Penal Law Section 40.05 defines the affirmative defense of entrapment.) This defense protects people who are not predisposed to committing a crime, but who give in only because of the nature and persistence of police pressure. Just giving a person the opportunity to commit a crime (such as merely asking a person to sell a controlled substance) is not entrapment. Moreover, undercover police are lawfu
