Abscam, the Judiciary and the Ethics of Entrapment

Abstract

This Article suggests that settled legal principles were inadequate to stem the controversy surrounding the Abscam convictions because the principles did not permit an examination of the propriety of the means used by government agents to create the Abscam crimes. Some jurists contend that the entrapment defense should restrain abuses of power by judging the investigative techniques against an objective standard of permissible governmental conduct. In most states and in the federal courts where the Abscam defendents were tried, however, entrapment is measured by a subjective standard requiring the government to show that the defendant was "predisposed" to respond criminally to undercover government inducements.