Entrapment (a term of
jurisprudence) refers to a
procedural defense; via which, a
defendant may argue that they should not be held
criminally liable for
actions which broke the
law, because they were induced (or
entrapped) by the
police to commit said acts.
John De Lorean was arrested in
1982 for selling
cocaine to undercover
police; in
court, De Lorean argued that the police had asked him to sell them the cocaine (and threatened him as a form of
coercion); he was found "
not guilty". De Lorean's
attorney stated in
Time (
March 19,
1984), "This [was] a
fictitious crime. Without the
Government, there would be no crime."
Entrapment is also the name of a 1999 movie starring Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Zeta-Jones works for an insurance agency, attempting to capture Connery (an art thief) by making him believe that she is a thief herself, thus entrapping him.