Academic

More news headlines on entrapment

By Tung Yin

Some recent news stories referencing the Mohamed Mohamud case and entrapment:

FBI's terror sting tactics questioned (USA Today)

Attorney general tells civil liberties group FBI didn't entrap Portland bomb-plot suspect Mohamud (Oregonian)

The Oregonian story includes the following statement from Attorney General Holder:

"Those who characterize the FBI's activities in this case as 'entrapment' simply do not have their facts straight -- or do not have a full understanding of the law," Holder told the group.

As I noted earlier, I'm not that sure that AG Holder has the law right in terms of arguments he's made against entrapment. . . .

Meanwhile, the USA Today story includes the usual sort of entrapment claim:

Farhana Khera, executive director of the Muslim civil rights group Muslim Advocates, says the sting operations suggest the FBI could be wasting valuable resources on people who, without the FBI's planning and technical help, may be incapable of little more than spouting unpopular political rhetoric.

"Some of these cases look and feel like entrapment," Khera says. Entrapment occurs when police persuade a person to carry out a crime the suspect had no previous intention to commit.

"But for the government's role in these cases," she says, "the suspects may have been left with their own bravado. Law enforcement resources need to be focused on actual threats."

These cases might or might not have been entrapment.  But arguments of the sort that Ms. Khera makes strike me as misguided.  Whether the targets of the sting would have been able to carry out the precise bomb attacks that were "assisted" by the FBI is an incomplete focus.  One does not have to build a bomb to pose a danger to crowds, as tragically demonstrated by Major Hasan (the Fort Hood shooter).  If the targets of these stings (Mohamud and Martinez) -- who are, of course, legally innocent as of this posting -- did indeed harbor intent to kill masses of people, then even if they were unable to build bombs, they could have bought guns and fired indiscriminately into crows, just as Hasan did.

There's no question that there is a tricky balance here.  It's entirely possible that the particular targets of the stings were not appropriate targets.  The government might fail to prove that they had murderous intent.  Or perhaps outreach would have steered them away from bad impulses.  But that is a far different question from saying that people who can't build bombs by themselves never present actual threats.

Full post as published by The Yin Blog on December 15, 2010 (boomark / email).