What is entrapment in Arizona?

Almost everyone who calls about entrapment has the same instinct: the police set me up, so the case should go away. In Arizona, the truth is more demanding. Entrapment is a real, statutory defense, but it is narrow, it is one of the few defenses that forces you to admit you committed the crime, and it puts the burden on you rather than the prosecutor. Understanding that trade before you say a word can be the difference between a defense that wins and one that hands the State a conviction. This guide explains the actual rule, where the line falls between a legal sting and true entrapment, and how a defense attorney decides whether the argument is worth making at all. For a broader look at how we build a defense, see our Arizona criminal defense overview.

Entrapment in Arizona is defined by A.R.S. 13-206, and the statute is short but strict. It says entrapment is an affirmative defense, which means it is not the State’s job to disprove it. Instead, the defendant carries the burden and must prove entrapment by clear and convincing evidence, a higher standard than the everyday preponderance standard used in most civil disputes.

The core idea is that the government cannot manufacture a crime by planting the idea in the mind of an innocent person and then arrest them for it. But the statute draws a hard boundary around that idea. It expressly states that it is not entrapment merely because law enforcement gave you an opportunity to commit the offense, used a ruse, or hid the officer’s identity. A sting operation, standing alone, is legal. Entrapment starts only where the government crosses from offering an opportunity to actively creating the criminal intent.

The three-part test in plain English

Under A.R.S. 13-206, to win an entrapment defense you must prove all three of the following by clear and convincing evidence. Miss any one and the defense fails.

• The idea started with the government. The plan to commit the offense must have originated with law enforcement officers or their agents, such as a confidential informant, rather than with you. If the idea was yours first, there is no entrapment.
• They urged and induced you. The officers or their agents must have actively urged and induced you to commit the crime. Simply making the offense available to you is not inducement. There has to be persuasion, pressure, or some form of active encouragement that moved you to act.
• You were not predisposed. You must show you were not predisposed to commit that type of offense before the government urged you. Predisposition means a preexisting willingness or readiness to break the law, and it is almost always the fight that decides the case.

Read together, these elements describe a specific story: an otherwise unwilling person who was talked into a crime by the government. That is very different from a willing person who simply got caught taking an opportunity the police provided.

The catch: you have to admit the crime

Here is the part that surprises people and the reason entrapment is never a casual argument. A.R.S. 13-206 requires that, to raise entrapment, the defendant admits by their testimony or other evidence the substantial elements of the offense charged. In plain terms, you cannot tell the jury “I didn’t do it, but if I did, I was entrapped.” To even get the defense, you must concede that you committed the act.

That makes entrapment an all-in strategy. You give up the ability to argue you are not guilty of the conduct, and you stake the entire case on proving the government created the crime. If the jury does not buy the entrapment argument, you have already admitted the offense, and a conviction becomes very likely. This is why the decision to raise entrapment is one of the most consequential calls in the whole case and should never be made without a clear-eyed attorney evaluation.

A legal sting versus true inducement

The whole defense lives on one line: the difference between the government affording you an opportunity, which is legal, and the government inducing you, which can be entrapment. Arizona law is clear that a sting is not automatically entrapment. Undercover work, decoys, and controlled buys are standard, court-approved police tactics. What matters is what the agents did once contact was made.

On the legal side of the line, an undercover officer who simply offers to sell drugs, or who poses as a buyer and waits to see if you will sell, is giving you an opportunity. If you take it, that is your choice and your predisposition showing. On the entrapment side of the line, an agent who repeatedly badgers a reluctant person, exploits sympathy or friendship, promises outsized rewards, or wears down someone who kept saying no has moved into inducement. The conduct, the pressure, and your resistance are what separate the two.

Concrete examples of how this plays out

Entrapment questions show up most often in a handful of Arizona case types, and the examples make the rule easier to see.

Undercover drug buys

Drug stings are the classic setting. An undercover officer arranges a buy, and the seller is charged under statutes like A.R.S. 13-3407 for sale or transportation of dangerous drugs. Just selling to an undercover buyer is not entrapment. But if an informant spent weeks pressuring a person with no history of dealing, playing on a hardship, and finally coaxed a single sale, the inducement and lack of predisposition can be real. Our Phoenix drug crime defense team sees both versions regularly.

Online solicitation and prostitution stings

Internet decoy operations are another common flashpoint. Officers pose as someone online, and a person who initiates and escalates the conversation is usually not entrapped, because the intent came from them. The analysis changes if the decoy pushed the topic first and pressed a hesitant person. These fact patterns come up constantly in online solicitation and prostitution charges, where who steered the conversation is often the whole ballgame.

Why predisposition usually decides these cases

In practice, the first two elements often blur together, and the case turns on predisposition: were you already willing to commit this kind of crime before the government got involved? Because entrapment protects the innocent person who was talked into it, prosecutors focus their entire attack on showing you were ready and willing all along.

Defense attorneys commonly see the State try to prove predisposition with things like prior similar conduct, how quickly and eagerly you responded, your familiarity with the criminal activity, whether you set the price or supplied the tools, and any statements suggesting you had done it before. If you jumped at the first offer, that reads as predisposition. If you refused repeatedly and only relented under sustained pressure, that reads as inducement of an unwilling person. This is why the details of the interaction, every message and every recorded word, matter so much. The evidence that police gathered to prove the crime is often the same evidence that shows how hard they had to push.

When entrapment is worth raising and when it backfires

Because raising entrapment means conceding the act, it is only worth doing when the inducement evidence is genuinely strong. It tends to be worth serious consideration when there is a documented pattern of the government pushing, when you have a clean history that supports a lack of predisposition, when an informant used friendship, romance, money, or sympathy to overcome your refusals, and when the record shows you said no more than once.

It backfires when the evidence shows you were a willing participant. If you initiated contact, negotiated readily, brought your own supply, or have prior conduct of the same kind, admitting the offense to argue entrapment simply gift-wraps the case for the prosecutor. In those situations a better path is often to attack the State’s proof directly, challenge the stop or search, or scrutinize how the operation was run. How officers built their case, and whether they had lawful grounds, ties into issues like probable cause versus reasonable suspicion in Arizona. The right move depends entirely on the facts, which is exactly why this is an attorney’s judgment call, not a do-it-yourself decision.

How a Maricopa County defense attorney evaluates it

When a potential entrapment case comes in, a defense attorney does not start with the label; they start with the record. The first step is pulling everything that captures the interaction: recorded calls and texts, undercover reports, informant communications, body-worn and surveillance footage, and the full timeline of contacts. Those materials answer the two questions that decide the defense: whose idea was it, and how much pushing did it take?

From there, the analysis is honest about the trade-off. An attorney weighs the strength of the inducement evidence against the cost of admitting the offense, tests how a Maricopa County jury is likely to see your history and your responses, and compares entrapment against every other available defense. Sometimes the best answer is a full entrapment defense at trial. Often it is using weak inducement evidence, or a badly run operation, as leverage in negotiation rather than as an all-or-nothing admission. The goal is never to raise entrapment for its own sake. It is to choose the path that actually gives you the best chance at the best outcome.