Is it entrapment if the FBI grooms and helps a "terrorist"?

[Little_Nemo]

@BigT

Nope, the story as given is entrapment, because the FBI person is the one who brings up the idea of actually doing something and gets him to plan something he was not going to plan. Before that, he just was trusting his superiors to do something instead.

Okay, I can see the argument you’re making. The FBI found somebody who was just in favor of the idea of terrorism and pushed him into becoming a participant in terrorism.

I think either interpretation is possible. We really should be reading the actual transcripts of what was said rather than working from hypothetical dialogue.

But I stand by what I’ve posted: it’s not entrapment to offer an opportunity to commit a crime to somebody who had a pre-existing intent to commit that type of crime.

[Loach]

@Alessan

Yeah, but mooks with motivation are a dime a dozen - it’s the guys with the resources who’re the actual high-quality targets. In my experience, going after potential suicide bombers is a waste of effort; there’s always more where they came from. Smart counter-terrorism organizations go after the bomb-makers.

Luckily in the US mooks like that aren’t a dime a dozen. We don’t have bomb makers in large numbers so we can just ignore the future suicide bombers. When we get to that point I’ll agree with you.

@AK84

Is that a defence to Terrorism charges in the United States?

Are you asking if entrapment is a potential defense to be used at trial? Absolutely. I’m sure that will be his defense.

@Habeed

Yes. Objectively speaking, I’m sure he’s guilty of something by the letter of the law. (all of the tens of thousands of pages of the Federal codes) And the evidence against him - chat logs, IP logs, written statements, his twitter posts, possession of the weapons - is probably solid, where it is beyond a reasonable doubt that he bought the guns and said the things he said.

So it’s open and shut. Jury isn’t supposed to judge based on fairness, they are supposed to find him guilty if the evidence is beyond a reasonable doubt that he violated <regulation X>. Since he violated it, they find him guilty, then the judge has a recommended sentence he has to adhere to, which is somewhere between decades in jail to life. Sometimes, juries acquit because the law isn’t fair (jury nullification), but he’s accused of being a terrorist. They won’t - because if there’s even a tiny chance he is a terrorist, and they acquit, and he goes and kills a dozen people later in an act of terror, the jurors would feel responsible.

With all that said, morally it feels like they gave the guy a raw deal. I think it’s virtually certain that if the FBI hadn’t done anything, he would have been just another nut, ranting and raving from time to time online for the rest of his days on this earth. That’s the problem I have with this. They took a nut and made him into a master criminal, and they did so for selfish reasons. The FBI can trumpet “the terrorists, they’re everywhere! See, we did our job and caught one! We need more money to find more terrorists!”

You are making it sound like they are going to go after him on some little known regulation stuck in the agriculture bill of 1979. They are not.

[steronz]

@Loach

Luckily in the US mooks like that aren’t a dime a dozen. We don’t have bomb makers in large numbers so we can just ignore the future suicide bombers. When we get to that point I’ll agree with you.

So what if instead of putting them in jail for the rest of their lives, we engage them in some more positive way? What if we used the hundreds of thousands of dollars we’re going to spend to prosecute this guy to send him to college, and then we spent the hundreds of thousands of dollars we’re going to spend to keep him in jail for the rest of his life to pay him to do some work for the government? We could give him some low-level IT job at the FDA or something, keep him busy and off the streets and proud to be an American and whatnot.

I know the purpose and effectiveness of prison has often been debated. One of the main reasons for prison is punishment/revenge. You do something bad, you go sit in a jail and think about it. But he hadn’t done anything bad before the FBI got involved, so that can’t be it. The other reason for prison is to prevent future crimes, but surely there’s some other, cheaper way we could have engaged this young man to prevent a terrorist attack. And lastly, his prosecution would serve as a warning to other misguided youngsters. But will it be effective? Or will this just further convince impressionable young men that the American government is out to get them, and needs to be dealt with?

I’m just not sure I feel any safer with this guy behind bars.

[Little_Nemo]

If sending people who threaten to commit crimes to prison has a deterrent value, what happens when you start giving college educations and jobs to people who threaten to commit crimes? Do you think that’s going to reduce the crime threat level?

[Loach]

By all means, let us give government jobs to all the anti-government wackos. Screw the law abiding people who currently have those jobs. That certainly does seem to be a workable solution.