United States v. Russell (1973) saw the Supreme Court uphold a Washington man's conviction for manufacturing narcotics after the defendant had appealed on the grounds that a law enforcement official had entrapped him by supplying him with ingredients used in their manufacture. During the fall of 1969, Bureau of Narcotics agent Joe Shapiro was assigned to locate an illegal meth lab suspected of operating in Whidbey Island, Washington. That December 7, Shapiro met the lab's operators Richard Russell and John and Pat Connolly and said he was part of a group that wanted to manage meth production and distribution in the Pacific Northwest. He offered to supply them with phenyl-2-propanone (P2P), a key ingredient in meth production, in return for half the resultant output. Shapiro said that he would like to see the lab and obtain a sample of their product.John Connolly gave him some samples and Pat said they'd manufactured three pounds of meth since last spring. Shapiro also saw an empty P2P bottle in the house. He came back on December 9 and gave them 100 grams of P2P. Shapiro watched them work and also helped pick up some pieces of tin foil and put them into a flask. Pat Connolly finished the rest of the process and Shapiro came by the next morning to buy his half of the meth. He also bought some of the remainder for $60.
On January 8, 1970, Shapiro came back and asked Connolly if he still wanted to do business. The latter said yes but he could not sell any more meth as he'd gotten some P2P elsewhere and was making a new batch. On the 11th, Shapiro returned with a search warrant and seized two P2P bottles, one an empty 500 gram container, and a partially full 100 gram one (not the bottle he'd given them). The three men were arrested on Federal narcotics charges.Jon Connolly failed to appear in court, but his brother and Richard Russell were found guilty of producing and distributing controlled substances. They argued that they were victims of entrapment, arguing that while their transactions with Shapiro did not directly affect their meth business, they also said that they would have had a difficult time obtaining P2P had he not supplied them with it.The Supreme Court had ruled on entrapment in two previous cases, Sorrells v. United States (1932) and Sherman v. United States (1958) in which the Court based its rulings on whether the individual was already predisposed to criminal activity. The jury in Connolly and Russell's trial found them guilty on the grounds that they would have produced meth regardless of Shapiro's involvement. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals however overturned sided with them and overturned their conviction. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court.
The Court ruled in favor of the government and upheld their conviction in a 5-4 ruling. Justice Rehnquist wrote the majority opinion where he argued that although P2P was hard to obtain, it was by no means impossible as Connolly and Russell had managed to secure a supply of it before and after they met Shapiro. "...we may some day be presented with a situation in which the conduct of law enforcement agents is so outrageous that due process principles would absolutely bar the government from invoking judicial processes to obtain a conviction." Rehnquist believed this case was not of that sort, but acknowledged that overzealous law enforcement was certainly a possibility.He added that the Court had already ruled on entrapment in the Sherman case and felt there was no reason to overturn that ruling. "We think that the decision of the Court of Appeals in this case quite unnecessarily introduces an unmanageably subjective standard which is contrary to the holdings of this Court in Sorrells and Sherman ... [T]here are circumstances when the use of deceit is the only practicable law enforcement technique available. It is only when the Government's deception actually implants the criminal design in the mind of the defendant that the defense of entrapment comes into play."
Justice William O. Douglas dissented. He believed that it was irrelevant whether or not Connolly and Russell had obtained P2P elsewhere, in this case a government agent gave them some and was therefore enabling the commission of an unlawful activity. Douglas cited a lower court decision where a counterfeiting conviction was thrown out because an undercover Secret Service agent had supplied the defendants with paper and ink. "Federal agents play a debased role when they become the instigators of the crime, or partners in its commission, or the creative brain behind the illegal scheme. That is what the federal agent did here when he furnished the accused with one of the chemical ingredients needed to manufacture the unlawful drug."Justice Potter Stewart penned a separate dissent. Like the concurrences in the earlier two opinions, he argued that a judge, not a jury, should decide whether law enforcement crossed the line. He rejected the idea that the defendant's conduct or state of mind had any bearing, since arguing entrapment by its very nature concedes commission of the act: "He may not have originated the precise plan or the precise details, but he was 'predisposed' in the sense that he has proved to be quite capable of committing the crime."Stewart agreed that a government agent giving Connally and Russell P2P was indisputably entrapment regardless of whether or not they had other sources of the material.
>>18330478>>18330480>>18330486>>18330488>Amerifats live in a country where entrapment is considered an ethical police practice
>>18330478everyone knows glowniggers commit crimes in order to solve them
>>18330478Washington seems like a good place to look if one's seeking meth tbqh.
In this case aren't we dealing with a preexisting meth lab? They already have meth they've produced and already committed a crime the narcotics agent already knows about so why did even bother entrapping them?
>>18330659There was obviously no entrapment. Police assist isn't entrapment, just like a police officer dressed like a hooker isn't entrapment. Now if there was evidence that the officer harassed and threatened one of the parties to do illegal activity then you have entrapment.
>>18330730>just like a police officer dressed like a hooker isn't entrapmentof course it is. it's enticing a guy to commit a crime.
