Vega v. Texas (Original)
Annotate this CaseAfter rejecting his entrapment defense, a jury convicted appellant Jose Vega of three drug offenses. On appeal, he argued that the trial judge reversibly erred by not instructing the jury accurately on his entrapment defense because the application instruction did not list inducement by the confidential informant as well as inducement by an undercover officer. The court of appeals held that appellant's failure to request that specific application instruction, or object to its omission, forfeited the issue on appeal. The Supreme Court granted review to reiterate that, "when a trial judge instructs on a defensive issue, he must do so correctly; thus any error in the charge actually given is subject to review under 'Almanza.'" In this case, the Court found that the judge's failure to list the confidential informant in the application charge was harmless because the entrapment instructions, taken as a whole, provided the jury with an adequate vehicle to fully consider and give effect to appellant's entrapment defense. Accordingly, the Court affirmed the appellate court's judgment.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.