Fake Stash Houses

[PedroDaGr8]

Leaving aside the shadiness of it, and the fact it is done by the ATF, can anyone explain to me how/why this is not entrapment?


The agent sells the person on the idea that there’s a vulnerability in the stash house and it can be easily robbed. The agent gives the person a car, or guns, or whatever the guy isn’t able to get on his own. He encourages the guy to recruit more people. You need a lot of bodies to rob stash houses that don’t exist.

They plan the robbery. The agent tape records them planning the robbery. Then they strap up to go rob the stash house that the agent made up.

Surprise! The agent arrests the guy and his friends. And it gets worse…


Then they’re all charged with conspiracy to possess drugs with an intent to distribute them. What quantity of drugs? Whatever quantity the agent made up! And, since the drug quantity drives the sentence, that means that the agent gets to make up basically any sentence he wants.

http://abovethelaw.com/2014/10/judge-posner-and-fake-stash-house-robbery-cases-why-prosecuting-fake-crime-is-bad-policy/

edit: Also, it seems like Judge Posner has loads of good opinions (even when he's on the losing side). I seldom seem to disagree with his logic.

[Darrell KSR]

There are other defenses (legal impossibility comes to mind, although factual impossiblity seldom works), but IMHO, entrapment isn't a great defense here. Entrapment requires, as an element of the defense, no predisposition to commit the crime. Get someone who has been involved in that crime before, you're toast trying to assert that defense.

Now, if you or I commit that crime, and we have no history in it, then maybe. You have to go to the other elements of the defense. But entrapment--as I told my class three weeks ago--is a sexy, made-for-TV defense that is seldom successful in real life.

This reminds me of putting some flypaper outside. You'll catch a few flies that way. But you won't catch nearly enough of them, and there are other, more effective ways of eradicating pests than this. This just happens to be easy.

[KeithKSR]

How do you steal something that doesn't exist?

[CitizenBBN]

You'd have to look long and hard to find a worse organization at conducting criminal sting operations than the ATF. They basically focus on taking people who weren't committing any gun crimes and enticing them to commit some, then arresting them.

B/c apparently there are so few hard core criminals in the country they need to push a few firmly into that category so they can have something to do.

Google the Minnesota paper series on their stings, how they paid for tattoos on people with mental issues, how they set up gun buying fronts in school zones so they can tack on extra charges, how they lose about 1 million cigarettes last year in stings, or the full auto wepaons they have had stolen from their cars.

Not to mention that just this week some documents were finally released from Phoenix ATF showing at least one more person killed by guns they gave out in Fast and Furious.

[suncat05]

Every time I see or hear about an ATF operation I just want to cringe..........and then go take a shower.

And let's not even bring up all of the dead bodies associated with some of their follies..........and the innocent people wrongly led into criminal activity who ordinarily would not have been involved in such activity.

[CitizenBBN]

Every time I see or hear about an ATF operation I just want to cringe..........and then go take a shower.
.
Or just duck, or get your vest on. dangerous being around those guys.

But as for thosse dead bodies, it's OK, most were Mexicans. :action-smiley-060:

[PedroDaGr8]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/judges-question-atf-stings-that-lure-suspects-into-fictitious-stickups/ar-BBeLntz

Looks like some judges are finding that the ATF is overstepping their bounsd on this.


One appellate judge wrote that the government's approach "verges too close to tyranny" and likened it to Philip K. Dick's science fiction short story "The Minority Report," in which citizens are locked away for "precrime" - crimes they have not yet committed.


Tinto said the cases raise a question about whether the stings prevent drug-related robberies or create would-be robbers who never would have become involved in such a crime.

"The defendants make bad choices, there's no doubt about it," she said. "But the question is: Do we want law enforcement creating situations where people make poor decisions, where the choices would not have existed in real life?"

[CitizenBBN]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/judges-question-atf-stings-that-lure-suspects-into-fictitious-stickups/ar-BBeLntz

Looks like some judges are finding that the ATF is overstepping their bounsd on this.

For reasons that completely elude me, the ATF seems to have an obsession with this kind of operation, where they manufacture the crime, recruit people into it often with strongarm tactics, then arrest them for going along. They do it with cigarettes too, and with the fencing operations where they pay crazy money to poor people to bring them guns and other merchandise, even to the point of encouraging them to go steal, people who were never in the past dealing in guns or high profile robbery.

Along the way they have been completely flippant and reckless. They've lost 2.1 MILLION cartons of smokes (the ATF says its only 447,000 cartons), thousands of guns, they've encouraged people to get tattoos and done all kinds of crazy stuff as fronts, put these gun fencing fronts in school zones just to increase the potential charges along with putting in video games to attract those kids to these places, it's a long, long list of crazy irresponsibility. Don't forget losing full auto weapons and allowing criminals to walk back OUT of these fronts with guns knowing they were going to commit crimes to bring them stuff to fence.

If their actions came out in a movie we'd all call it unbelievable. They call it a regular day at the office.