How to work a "Mr. Big" sting into a US-based story

[silentg_canada]

"Mr. Big" is an undercover interrogation technique used to elicit confessions in Canada and Australia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Big_(police_procedure)When I started writing my story, which is based around the present day in Arizona and New York City, I didn't know that it is (apparently) not used in the US and according to one article is

Comments

[belleweather]

I suspect that it is not, and is unlikely to ever be, used in the U.S. It looks like it would fall under the case law about Entrapment in the U.S. and would be unlikely to be used because the information gathered by the police would probably be inadmissible in a court of law, which means the evidence would be useless -- and a lot of trouble and expense would have to be spent to get it, it looks like.

A quick and dirty run-down of entrapment is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment

Wikipedia also has a reasonably decent rundown of the major entrapment caselaw.

[silentg_canada]

Thank you! :)

[sethg_prime]

IIUC, entrapment is when the police entice someone to commit a crime that they wouldn’t otherwise have committed, and then prosecute for that crime. But in the Mr. Big technique, the crime that is being prosecuted is the one that the defendant committed before the police got involved. So I don’t see how an entrapment defense would apply.

[marycatelli]

I have to agree that it doesn't look like entrapment.

[frenchroast]

Seconding belleweather. It sounds very much like entrapment. As an American, I've never heard of a "Mr. Big" sting, and I watch a fair amount of TV/read a fair amount of books in that area that I would've run across it by now if it was any sort of option--the only thing I thought of when I first started reading was Mr. Big, the character from Sex and the City, and I've only see one episode of that show. I think the closest thing you could get would be to have police/FBI infiltrate an operation already in place as an undercover cop, and I think the main way that's used is just so they know what is happening when, and who is involved, and arrest when the crime is underway.

Police in the US can't ask someone to commit a crime, not if they hope to successfully prosecute said person. That's almost a standard trope/problem when the cops/main character knows someone's a criminal, but don't have actual proof--how to get the person to confess OR to catch them committing another crime, since they can't just trick them into doing another one.

[silentg_canada]

Thanks a lot!

[silentg_canada]

Thanks for the information, I really appreciate it.

[lilacsigil]

Some aspects of it apply in the US, though the police have to be very careful about what they say. For example, a police officer can pose as a prostitute to arrest johns, but they can't specifically offer to have sex for money, as that would be entrapment. A police officer can pretend to be a hitman and accept money to kill someone, but they can't actually offer to kill someone. They can provide the broad situation, but the target has to break the law.

The sting is usually used in Australia in breaking up gangs where it's extremely unlikely that any individual involved is going to crack, but we don't have the same kind of entrapment laws here, though this is being challenged.

[bonwriter]

One caveat: when we say this technique is illegal in the US, that means only that the confession will be inadmissible in evidence at the trial of the suspect. It's not illegal in the sense that the cops would themselves be subjected to any kind of punishment. So it may very well be used on US soil when the goal is something other than admissible evidence, e.g., if the cops hope to extract a guilty plea from the suspect, or when they simply want to find out what happened. A lot of "illegal" searches are conducted for the same reasons, with no expectation of ever being able to use the seized evidence in court.

[marycatelli]

Err -- inadmissible on what grounds? That the police lied to him is certainly not.

[bonwriter]

If they were masquerading as fellow criminals, I assume they didn't give him his Miranda warnings.

[marycatelli]

Not necessary. He was not detained by the police, and therefore anything he says is admissible.