Jacobson v. United States
Case Date: 05/06/1992
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Jacobson v. United States, 503 U.S. 540 (1992), is a case decided by the United States Supreme Court regarding the criminal procedure topic of entrapment. A narrowly divided court overturned the conviction of a Nebraska man for receiving child pornography through the mail, ruling that postal inspectors had implanted a desire to do so through repeated written entreaties.
It was the first time the court had considered an entrapment case from outside the realm of controlled-substance enforcement, or one involving conduct that had only recently been criminalized. By relying exclusively on whether the defendant had a predisposition to commit the crime, the court appeared to have finally resolved a lingering issue in its previous decisions on the subject.[1]
The decision was seen as a rare triumph for defendants before a conservative court that frequently sided with prosecutors.[2] Guidelines for federal law enforcement agents were changed in its wake,[3] and it was described as having brought entrapment "back from the dead."[4]
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