Criminal Procedure — entrapment

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U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit

Criminal

Criminal Procedure — entrapment

Where a government informant befriended the defendant, introduced him to child pornography, and pestered the defendant for weeks to deliver child pornography to him, the district court erred in not giving an entrapment instruction to the jury.

“Elliott himself characterized McGill as a loner with few other friends, living in near isolation. And the jury had before it McGill’s confession to Elliott of his social anxiety. Elliott alone could have traded on McGill’s insecurities to make the number of telephone calls that he did in a brief period of time. The jury heard many of those conversations, and Elliott conceded that whenever McGill innocently turned the discussion to one of many subjects unrelated to child pornography, as he often did, Elliott would do his best to steer McGill back to the single objective of the FBI’s investigation: convincing him to download child pornography for Elliott, his friend.”

Reversed and Remanded.

12-3490 U.S. v. McGill

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Gottschall, J., Rovner, J.