This is an important decision about the availability of the defense of entrapment generally - but particularly in the context of a fake stash-house robbery orchestrated by the Government where its chief target was a person with a “serious criminal record.”

Here, by a vote of 8-2, the Seventh Circuit ...

Federal agents suspected Nicolas Gomez of involvement in a cocaine-distribution ring operating in Chicago and Milwaukee. A wiretap on the phones of Robert Romero, a known Chicago supplier, revealed a reseller named “Guero” who lived in Milwaukee. The agents believed that Gomez was Guero, in part because the cell phones ...

Every criminal defense lawyer involved in drug cases should remember the name of U.S. Marshal Robert Almonte of the Western District of Texas, a self-described expert witness in the field of the “cultural anthropology and theology” of the “Mexican Drug Underworld.” Almonte has apparently become a legend in law enforcement ...

In this case, District Judge Wright used a different theory to attack the Government’s unseemly but growing practice of ensnaring the weak and gullible in its reprehensible plots to get more convictions. As he wrote in his opening paragraph:

“‘Lead us not into temptation,’ Judge Noonan warned. U.S. v. Black, ...