newbie here asking a newbie question: whats the legal definition of entrapment?

Im just wondering cuz Ive heard of people getting arrested by LE after asking them if they're a cop.

I'm not an attorney, but my layman's understanding of entrapment is when LE entices an otherwise law abiding citizen to break the law.

For instance, you are walking down the street, and a guy walks up to you and offers you $1,000 to deliver a briefcase 2 blocks away (lobby of nice hotel). He tells you that there is illegal xxx in the briefcase. You figure: What the heck. Upon delivery, you are busted for possessing something illegal. That is entrapment.

You had no intention, plan, desire, of committing a crime while you were walking down the street. They enticed you to do something you would not otherwise do (they gave you the means, opportunity, and motive).

Street walking busts are a little different. You are driving around looking for something illegal. You see a hot chick standing on a street corner in the red light district. You approach her. All she does is make friendly chit-chat. You offer her $ for a date. That is not entrapment. You were there to break the law, you just happened to do it in front of a cop.

If she makes the first move (she says $ for a date), then she is crossing the line. You can plead ignorance (you were lost and she looked like a friendly person who could help you).

Regarding asking them if they are LE. They do not have to identify themselves as LE if they are asked (undercover cops planted in a gang). It is not a defense "If I had known he was a cop, I would not have broken the law". You should not have broken the law in the first place.

I don't practice criminal law, but based on observation and law school, entrapment is a desperate defense.   AFAIK, you have to plead guilty, and prove, as an issue of fact (ie, convince the jury) that you wouldn't have committed the crime if LE hadn't manufactured it for you.    The prosecutor will come back and say  they didn't make you commit it, you were waiting for an opportunity they provided.

You have to hope for a jury of cons, gimps & other hard luck fellas.

I wouldn't rely on the belief that LE has to say anything close to the truth.

Actually, you have to plead NOT guilty.  People who plead guilty don't get juries.  They get sentenced.  

Your answer is right about the procedure and the odds but somewhat off about the substance.  I will postr another message in this thread with a general explanation of entrapment.

Entrapment is when the police put so much pressure on the defendant that they actually cause him to break the law when he otherwise wouldn't.  We all have our breaking points, and when police push someone past his they are not allowed to arrest him for it.

Merely offering a temptation, no matter how great, is not enough.  Neither is making someone feel like he can get away with the crime, since that just provides an opportunity and doesn't pressure him into acting on it.

When a cop falsely says he isn't a cop, he is making the suspect less worried about being caught but is not overcoming the guy's unwillingness to commit the crime itself.  That's not entrapment.

Your answer is what a lot of laypeople think entrapment means, but it is not correct.  If it were, police stings would almost never result in convictions.

Mere enticement is not enough.  For a cop's actions to be entrapment they have to involve pressuring the defendant into breaking a law he otherwise would not have broken.  When cops sucessfully entice someone, they get him to break a law he WOULD have broken on his own if the right opportunity came along.  This is the distinction.

Neither of your examples would be considered entrapment.  In each the police offered the defendant a temptation to break the law, but the defendant decided on his own to go ahead with the crime.  

You are right that entrapment rarely works as a defense.  You are also right that cops don't have to admit they are cops.  But you are wrong when you say that planting the idea in the head of someone who didn't already intend to commit a crime is enough to qualify as entrapment.

There isnt any such thing any more really, all that was written over by the Bush administration with the Patriot act , and its brother, Patriot Act II

Oh, please.  I realize folks may not like Bush, but  the sort of things we're talking about are local laws enforced by local cops and tried by local judges - nothing at all federal.