Prosecutors petitioned the Supreme Court for "certiorari". For the first time in an entrapment case, not only did the Court uphold a conviction, but split its decision. After reviewing the case and Russell's arguments for adopting a new standard for entrapment, Rehnquist first pointed to practical problems specific to the case:  Even if we were to surmount the difficulties attending the notion that due process of law can be embodied in fixed rules, and those attending respondent's particular formulation, the rule he proposes would not appear to be of significant benefit to him. For, on the record presented, it appears that he cannot fit within the terms of the very rule he proposes. The record discloses that although the propanone was difficult to obtain, it was by no means impossible. The defendants admitted making the drug both before and after those batches made with the propanone supplied by Shapiro. Shapiro testified that he saw an empty bottle labeled phenyl-2-propanone on his first visit to the laboratory on December 7, 1969. And when the laboratory was searched pursuant to a search warrant on January 10, 1970, two additional bottles labeled phenyl-2-propanone were seized. Thus, the facts in the record amply demonstrate that the propanone used in the illicit manufacture of methamphetamine not only could have been obtained without the intervention of Shapiro but was in fact obtained by these defendants. The next sentence has reverberated around discourse on the entrapment defense ever since: "...we may some day be presented with a situation in which the conduct of law enforcement agents is so outrageous that due process principles would absolutely bar the government from invoking judicial processes to obtain a conviction." But, the justice continued, "the instant case is distinctly not of that breed". Later, he acknowledged the possibility of "overzealous law enforcement". He went on to reject the notion of changing the entrapment standard, saying the Court had already reaffirmed the subjective test in "Sherman" and saw no reason to change now. He reiterated previous justices' argument against it from those decisions, and rapped the lower court: "We think that the decision of the Court of Appeals in this case quite unnecessarily introduces an unmanageably subjective standard which is contrary to the holdings of this Court in "Sorrells" and "Sherman" ... [T]here are circumstances when the use of deceit is the only practicable law enforcement technique available. It is only when the Government's deception actually implants the criminal design in the mind of the defendant that the defense of entrapment comes into play."