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Criminal Procedure — entrapment

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//November 20, 2012//

Criminal Procedure — entrapment

By: WISCONSIN LAW JOURNAL STAFF//November 20, 2012//

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United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Criminal

Criminal Procedure — entrapment

Where the defendant first suggested that an undercover agent pay him a bribe, he was not entitled to present an entrapment defense.

“The district court correctly concluded that there was insufficient evidence that the government induced Plowman to accept the bribe. First, the bribe was a relatively small amount; it was not large enough to be labeled an inducement. We have previously hypothesized that if the government ‘offered a derelict $100,000 to commit a minor crime that he wouldn’t have dreamed of committing for the usual gain that such a crime could be expected to yield, and he accepted the offer and committed the crime, that would be entrapment.’ Evans, 924 F.2d at 717. But a bribe for a comparatively small value is not likely to be an inducement. That was the case in Blassingame, in which we ruled that bribes totaling $9,000 were insufficient to establish inducement. Blassingame, 197 F.3d at 283. In this case, Plowman accepted a bribe of $5,000 in cash, and had an expectation that he would receive a $1,000 campaign contribution and perhaps a ‘thousand or two’ more. Although this bribe was large enough for Plowman to wine and dine government officials and still have money left over for his own personal use, the bribe was still less than the bribe in Blassingame.”

Affirmed.

11-3781 U.S. v. Plowman

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, McKinney, J., Manion, J.

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