> The charge of entrapment is separate from the severity of the crime someone is entrapped into or whether the entrapment would be considered a sufficient motive, were it not simulated. It is merely enough that the police coerced the defendant.
Yes, it's separate, but the point was that there are no excuse defenses that cover it, period.
> The blackmail, however, was for a delayed use of force - loss of freedom/liberty - which is tantamount to loss of life, and indeed in this case Ross lost the remainder of his life.
The law recognizes no such equivalence, nor do any of your sources show that. It would be ridiculous for the law to reward you for trying to escape being brought to court, particularly if you thought you had a reason you'd be sent to jail after their examination.
> It would be uncharitable (again) to suggest that it was merely about property. But (again) all one needs to establish entrapment is threat to property.
The threat of going to jail when your crimes are exposed is one made by the court in the first place, so how can it rule that it was somehow wrong to threaten you with punishment or excuse you for trying to have someone killed to avoid answering to the court?
I did support that by pointing out how none of the excuse defenses cover this in general. Hiring a hitman is simply criminal, so you need some reason to say that a law-abiding citizen might think it was okay in this circumstance, which brings us to the excuse defenses. Courts do not entertain hypotheticals, so there's no precedent. If you want to argue that they do, you should instead find a time when someone was excused for hiring a hitman.
> Please stop referring to webcomics as "the" law guide.
Okay, now this is just silly. 'The', as I used it, doesn't mean it's the only guide or the definitive source of all law, it means it's the same one I've been referencing. You can denigrate it as a 'comic', but legal textbooks actually look very much like that comic in written form. They lay out various scenarios and explain how the law plays out. So the main difference is that this one has little illustrations. It still covers the elements of each item and gives examples of how they work.
> All the the defense needs to do is show that there was pressure (coercion).
They have to show that they were not otherwise inclined to commit the crime and that the coercion was sufficient to change their mind (subjective standard) or to change the mind of any law abiding citizen (objective standard). "They're allowed to go after those who would say yes."
You quote that "the defendant has to offer evidence to clear their willing involvement in a crime"
But such evidence has been offered. They show him carefully considering whether to get a hitman and answering "yes" with no evidence of reluctance or refusal, save some worries about how it might impact his business. The fact that he deliberated works against him, too. He could more easily claim that the pressure got to him if he had acted hastily, in a panic. The fact that it was a coldly calculated move will leave people to infer malice.
> DPR will be facing separate charges in a separate case for the hitman, will he not?
Maybe, but he's got a bunch of life sentences right now, so I almost wonder if they will even bother? I don't expect them to play nice here, though. Whatever they choose will be to make sure he's well and thoroughly screwed, given how high profile this is.
As you can see, I have no illusions about them playing nice.
> It is not my responsibility to establish this.
I pointing out that the burden of proof is, legally, on the side of the one claiming entrapment. That's how the law works. If you want to convince me that DPR was entrapped, that's what you have to establish. Any lesser burden does not meet the standard set forth in law and is, for that reason, unconvincing.
> If the police entered a mall, forced someone at gunpoint to kill another person, could that person then be arrested for murder with no possibility of arguing that they were entrapped?
This scenario is in the duress chapter, albeit not by a cop.
The person in that scenario was guilty if they pulled the trigger. They might get it reduced to a lesser offense like manslaughter, but they wouldn't be excused. The person, cop or otherwise, holding a literal gun to their head would also be arrested.
No such scenario is on offer here, though. The loss of freedom resulting from blackmail over exposing one's crimes would be caused by the court itself. And the court is going to trust the court's own judgement (how could it not?) over the contents of the blackmail. As it will believe that it would fairly judge a law-abiding citizen (for whom the blackmail would be false), it has every reason to infer by that very fact that those who would hire a killer to escape the court's own scrutiny are up to no good.
Moreover, a court does not consider its own threat to jail you in the event it judges you to have broken the law to be equivalent to losing your life. So you cannot draw a hasty equivalence between being jailed and being killed and try to use the duress rules for losing your life. The duress rules don't even excuse you for killing someone when there's an immediate threat to your life, so why would they excuse something less than that? Now, the self-defense rules can excuse you for protecting yourself, but they require an immediate threat (among other things), and yet DPR had time to write about this in his diary, as I have quoted up thread.
If I'm dismissive, it's because I cannot find a case for him to make here, based on law. But this is nothing. Actual lawyers are positively savage in how they destroy weak arguments.
So I do not expect his lawyers to argue this in court, though this is the sort of argument I might expect if he went pro se and tried his own hand at arguing with the court. He might do that just to grand-stand, but it wouldn't buy him anything but press coverage.
I expect that he will appeal somehow, and his lawyers will likely cite some evidentiary grounds, or similar procedural matters (e.g. "the trial court improperly allowed this evidence because...").
I expect him to lose the appeal. If he tries to appeal to the Supreme Court, I expect that will end with them denying his petition for a writ of certiorari.
You, and anyone else still reading this, can determine the relative quality of our expectations by comparing what we have written is likely to happen to what actually happens. There should be some mismatch for both of us, of course--nobody has a crystal ball--but the distance between our expectations and reality is likely the most objective way to make an assessment.
I think perhaps that would be better than continuing further. Feel free to make your own predictions.