Keith Jacobson, a Nebraska farmer, ordered two magazines, Bare Boys I and Bare Boys II, from a California book store. He said he considered them "nudist type publications." Some might consider them child pornography, though they did not depict any sexual activity. In any event, this sort of publication was not illegal at that time.
Subsequently it was made a federal crime to knowingly receive by mail child pornography. A Postal Service inspector found Mr. Jacobson's name in the bookstore's files. Thus began repeated solicitations by postal and Customs Service officials aimed at getting Mr. Jacobson to order publications that by their descriptions may or may not have seemed illegal. When he finally did (after 26 months), he was arrested, tried and convicted.
He claimed entrapment, and the Supreme Court last week ruled that it was. For the court, Justice Byron White, a former Justice Department official, said this was a clear case of government going beyond its own guidelines and previous Supreme Court opinions which say you may not "originate a criminal design, implant in an innocent person's mind the disposition to commit a criminal act, and then induce commission of the crime so that the Government may prosecute."