University of Minnesota Law School Scholarship Repository Minnesota Law Review 1982 Entrapment, Shocked Consciences, and the Staged Arrest Bennett L. Gershman Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mlr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Gershman, Bennett L., "Entrapment, Shocked Consciences, and the Staged Arrest" (1982). Minnesota Law Review. 890. https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/mlr/890 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the University of Minnesota Law School. It has been accepted for inclusion in Minnesota Law Review collection by an authorized administrator of the Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Entrapment, Shocked Consciences, and the Staged Arrest Bennett L. Gershman* I. INTRODUCTION On November 1, 1973, in the Criminal Court of the City of New York, Kings County, Stephen Vitale was arraigned on a charge of armed robbery. According to the complaining wit- ness, Morton Hirsch, Vitale placed a pistol against Hirsch's head, threatened him, and robbed him of over $8,000. The sup- porting affidavit of Police Officer Brian Cosgrove stated that as Vitale was fleeing from the robbery scene, Cosgove arrested him and seized a pistol from him.' On the surface, this proceeding appeared no different from thousands of similar proceedings taking place daily in criminal courts throughout the country. In fact, Vitale, Hirsch, and Cos- grove were undercover agents; New York's Special Anti-Cor- ruption Prosecutor had authorized their activities 2 as part of a program to detect corruption in the criminal justice system. 3 False court documents, false statements made to judges, and * Associate Professor of Law, Pace University School of Law.