United States v. Montoya

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

When a person is caught red-handed in the commission of a crime, assiduous defense counsel often is tempted to consider an entrapment defense. In the case before us, the defendant followed this course— but things did not go well for him. Among his other plaints, the defendant insists that the district court forced him to show his hand prematurely. And to make a bad situation worse, the court—at the conclusion of all the evidence—ruled that the defendant had not carried his entry-level burden of producing sufficient evidence to send the entrapment defense to the jury.

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