Mistake and Entrapment Flashcards
In relation to the elements of an offense that include a requirement of intention, knowledge or subject recklessness when can a mistake provide acquittal?
Answer:
A person can be acquitted if there was no such state of mind (intention, knowledge, recklessness) at the time of the act even though that mistake of fact may not have been based on reasonable grounds.
Define the term in entrapment?
Answer:
The term entrapment occurs when an agent of an enforcement body deliberately causes a person to commit an offense, so that person can be prosecuted.
It is not a substantive defence. No grounds upon a defendant is entitled to an acquittal.
If the entrapment is unfair it may result in the court excluding the evidence using it’s inherent jurisdiction to prevent an abuse of process by the avoidance of unfairness
In terms of entrapment the courts tend to distinguish between two circumstances. What are they?
Answer:
The circumstances are where officers have provided the opportunity to those ‘predisposed’ to commit certain offences and
Those situations where officers have initiated, encouraged, or stimulated offenses by a person who would otherwise not have been an offender in a general sense.
What is the leading precedent in Police v Lavelle?
Answer:
It helps explain why New Zealand rejects the defense of entrapment as follows;
The situation was Levalle was trying to employ woman for prostitution. An undercover police woman Applied for the job and Lavelle used her to find customers in order to use the protitutes so that Lavelle could live off the earnings.
The undercover police woman arrested Lavelle. The court found that Levalle had a continuing interest in recruiting woman for the purposes of prostitution and living off the earnings. Therefore he was not made to do something that he had not already contemplated.
