Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-11-10037/USCOURTS-ca9-11-10037-1/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Angel Mahon
Appellant
United States of America
Appellee

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

CORDAE L. BLACK,

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 11-10036

D.C. No.

2:09-cr-01040-MHM-4

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

ANGEL MAHON,

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 11-10037

D.C. No.

2:09-cr-01040-MHM-6

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

KEMFORD J. ALEXANDER,

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 11-10039

D.C. No.

2:09-cr-01040-MHM-2

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2 UNITED STATES V. BLACK

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.

TERRANCE L. TIMMONS,

Defendant-Appellant.

No. 11-10077

D.C. No.

2:09-cr-01040-MHM-3

ORDER DENYING

PETITIONS FOR

PANEL REHEARING

AND PETITIONS FOR

REHEARING EN

BANC

Filed May 2, 2014

Before: John T. Noonan, Jr., Susan P. Graber,

and Raymond C. Fisher, Circuit Judges.

Order;

Dissent by Judge Reinhardt

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UNITED STATES V. BLACK 3

SUMMARY*

Criminal Law

The panel denied petitions for panel rehearing, and denied

petitions for rehearing en banc on behalf of the court, in cases

arising out of a reverse sting operation in which an ATF

undercover agent recruited the defendants to carry out an

armed robbery of a fictional cocaine stash house. 

Judge Noonan voted to grant the petitions for panel

rehearing and recommended granting the petitions for

rehearing en banc.

Judge Reinhardt, joined by Chief Judge Kozinski,

dissented from the denial of rehearing en banc. He wrote that

the majority opinion sends a dangerous signal that courts will

uphold law enforcement tactics even though their threat to

values of equality, fairness, and liberty is unmistakable.

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has

been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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4 UNITED STATES V. BLACK

ORDER

Judge Noonan has voted to grant the petitions for panel

rehearing and recommended granting the petitions for

rehearing en banc. Judges Graber and Fisher have voted to

deny the petitions for panel rehearing. Judge Graber has

voted to deny the petitions for rehearing en banc and Judge

Fisher has so recommended.

The full court was advised of the petitions for rehearing

en banc. A judge requested a vote on whether to rehear the

matter en banc. The matter failed to receive a majority of the

votes of the nonrecused active judges in favor of en banc

consideration. Fed. R. App. P. 35(f).

Appellant Cordae L. Black’s petition for rehearing en

banc (No. 11-10036), filed November 5, 2013, is DENIED.

Appellant Angel Mahon’s petition for panelrehearingand

rehearing en banc (No. 11-10037), filed January 6, 2014, is

DENIED.

Appellant Kemford J. Alexander’s petition for panel

rehearing and rehearing en banc (No. 11-10039), filed

January 6, 2014, is DENIED.

Appellant Terrance L. Timmons’ petition for panel

rehearing and rehearing en banc (No. 11-10077), filed

November 6, 2013, is DENIED.

Judge Reinhardt’s dissent from denial of rehearing en

banc is filed concurrently with this Order.

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UNITED STATES V. BLACK 5

Judge REINHARDT, with whom Chief Judge KOZINSKI

joins, dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc:

The Black cases arise from a profoundly disturbing use of

government power that directly imperils some of our most

fundamental constitutional values. An undercover

government agent in Phoenix sent a paid confidential

informant (CI) to randomly recruit “bad guys” in a “bad part

of town” to help rob a non-existent stash house. While

trolling in a bar, the paid CIsuccessfully tempted a randomlyselected person to participate in the (fictional) crime by

offering him the opportunity to obtain a huge financial

benefit. After the CI put the participant in touch with the

government agent, the agent urged the participant to bring

others into the plot, played the principal role in devising and

executing the imaginary crime, and then walked the

defendants through a script that ensured lengthy prison

sentences for committing a crime that did not exist.

The Black cases require us to address the limits on how

our government may treat its citizens. They pose the question

whether the government may target poor, minority

neighborhoods and seek to tempt their residents to commit

crimes that might well result in their escape from poverty. 

Equally important, these cases force us to consider the

continued vitality of the outrageous government conduct

doctrine itself. The majority opinion decides all of these

issues incorrectly. Further, despite its claims to the contrary,

the majority’s reasoning does virtually nothing to caution the

government about overreaching. Instead, it sends a

dangerous signal that courts will uphold law enforcement

tactics even though their threat to values of equality, fairness,

and liberty is unmistakable. I therefore dissent from the

court’s decision not to rehear these cases en banc.

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6 UNITED STATES V. BLACK

I

The facts are undisputed. See United States v. Black,

733 F.3d 294, 297–301 (9th Cir. 2013). The government sent

a paid CI to Phoenix with instructions to recruit random

persons to help rob a non-existent cocaine stash house. 

Following orders, the CI went to bars in “a bad part of town”

and looked for people who seemed to him like “bad guys.” 

The CI had not been told to seek out people already engaged

in criminal activity or even persons engaged in suspicious

conduct. Rather, as instructed, he trolled for targets in bars

and eventually encountered Shavor Simpson, who expressed

a willingness to join in the robbery. The CI introduced

Simpson to his handler, Agent Zayas, who posed as a

disgruntled former drug courier. Simpson asserted that he

had criminal experience and introduced Zayas to Cordae

Black. Agent Zayas recruited Simpson and Black, fed them

details about the imaginary target (including the number of

kilos of cocaine to be found in the imaginary stash house),

encouraged them to be sure to bring guns along while

performing their government-created mission, and described

“facts” regarding the stash house in order to convince

Simpson to involve more people in their plan (this is how

Defendants Alexander, Mahon, and Timmons got involved). 

Agent Zayas told the defendants when to meet and where to

go. Black contributed to the planning of the offense, but the

scheme was of the government’s devising. When the

defendants met with Agent Zayas in preparation for the

robbery, he led them to a warehouse where they were

arrested.

The entire operation was, of course, a fiction. Agent

Zayas had created an elaborate crime-script and the

defendants had followed it under his sustained and careful

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UNITED STATES V. BLACK 7

supervision. All Agent Zayas had to do was send his CI to a

“bad” part of town in search of “bad” guys, leaving the choice

of targets entirely to his CI’s prejudices and intuitions. Sure

enough, after testing a number of people to see if they would

be willing to commit a crime that would allow them to make

a great deal of money, the CI had his first success. From

there on the government’s scheme proceeded as planned.

II

The Black cases present important questions about our

constitutional values. As we have long recognized, the Due

Process Clause requires us to dismiss the indictment in

“extreme cases in which the government’s conduct violates

fundamental fairness.” United States v. Stinson, 647 F.3d

1196, 1209 (9th Cir. 2011) (citation omitted). In other words,

a conviction must fall where “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.” United States v. Russell,

411 U.S. 423, 431–32 (1973). Here, the government’s

conduct ran afoul of several fundamental constitutional

principles and, thus, the convictions cannot stand.

One of the most serious problems with the law

enforcement tactics used in the Black cases is that they

present a direct threat to the fundamental principle of racial

equality. It is deeply disturbing that Agent Zayas sent his

paid CI to look for “bad guys” in a “bad part of town,” i.e. in

a minority neighborhood. In an age of widely-reported

unequal enforcement of the criminal laws, both at the state

and federal levels, the sort of assignment given to the CI is an

open invitation to racial discrimination—especially given the

complete absence of any effort by Agent Zayas to aim the

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8 UNITED STATES V. BLACK

operation at known or suspected criminals.1See, e.g., Floyd

v. City of New York, 959 F. Supp. 2d 540, 560 (S.D.N.Y.

2013), appeal dismissed (Sept. 25, 2013) (Scheindlin, J.)

(finding discriminatory enforcement by police of stop and

frisk policies in New York City); Michelle Alexander, The

New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Age of

Colorblindness 9 (2010); Bruce Western, Punishment and

Inequality in America 3 (2006). The manifest danger of

racial discrimination inherent in the law enforcement tactics

used here is an important part of why “random,” suspicionless

dragnets that test people for their willingness to break the law

are offensive to the Constitution. Cf. United States v.

Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456, 483 (1996) (Stevens, J., dissenting)

(warning against “the danger of arbitrary enforcement” of the

drug laws and invoking “the need for careful scrutiny of any

colorable claim of discriminatory enforcement”). The Due

Process Clause protects many of our rights, including the

right be free from the use of law enforcement tactics that are

inherently racially discriminatory. See Bolling v. Sharpe,

347 U.S. 497, 499 (1954) (“[T]he concepts of equal

protection and due process, both stemming from our

American ideal of fairness, are not mutually exclusive. The

‘equal protection of the laws’ is a more explicit safeguard of

prohibited unfairness than ‘due process of law,’ . . . [b]ut, as

this Court has recognized, discrimination may be so

unjustifiable as to be violative of due process.”).

A similar analysis also applies to socio-economic

discrimination. Cf. Little v. Streater, 452 U.S. 1 (1981);

Roberts v. LaVallee, 389 U.S. 40 (1967); Harper v. Virginia

1

It is not surprising that the record before us reveals that all of the Black

defendants are in all likelihood black, although it is possible that one or

more is Hispanic.

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UNITED STATES V. BLACK 9

Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966); Douglas v. People of

State of Cal., 372 U.S. 353 (1963); Griffin v. Illinois,

351 U.S. 12 (1956).2 The danger of tempting otherwise lawabiding people into crime through reverse stings is

substantially heightened when the government takes aim at

poor neighborhoods and tempts their residents with the

prospect of making large amounts of money through criminal

activity.

3

See Black, 733 F.3d at 313 (Noonan, J., dissenting)

(“‘Lead us not into temptation’ is part of a prayer familiar to

many. But few, I believe, would think of this prayer as

addressed to the government of the United States or would

think it necessary to address the government with such a

request.”). At the right moment and when described in

attractive enough terms, such offers may lead astray

otherwise law abiding young men living in poverty, and

motivate them to make false or exaggerated claims about

their qualifications to serve as participants in the proposed

venture—including claims about prior criminal experience

that lack any substantial basis in truth. But it is not just

individuals without any record with whom we must be

concerned. In poor minority areas, there are many young

men who, during their teenage years, have committed some

non-violent or comparatively minor offenses, and who may

be particularly susceptible to the government’s suggestion

that they engage in more serious criminal conduct. See

generally Paul Butler, Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory of

2

See also, e.g., United States v. Burgum, 633 F.3d 810, 815 (9th Cir.

2011) (holding that “the Constitution prohibits imposition of a longer

prison term based on the defendant’s poverty”).

3

“A ‘reverse sting’ occurs when the government initiates the criminal

conduct, setting up a fictitious crime and arresting the criminals as they

begin to carry out what they believe is a real crime.” Black, 733 F.3d at

313 n.1.

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10 UNITED STATES V. BLACK

Justice (2010). These young men may yet become

productive, successful members of society, or their lives may

be forever changed for the worse should they succumb to the

government’s blandishments.

The latter scenario is particularly likely in these difficult

times of swiftly rising economic inequality and alarming

levels of unemployment. See Joseph Stiglitz, The Price of

Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our

Future (2013). According to one economist, American

income inequality has “been increasing steadily since the

1970s, and now has reached levels not seen since 1928.” 

Drew Sesilver, U.S. Income Inequality, On Rise For Decades,

Is Now Highest Since 1928, Pew Research Center (Dec. 5,

2013). Many other studies confirm a vast expansion in

inequality. See, e.g., Estelle Sommeiller & Mark Price, The

Increasingly Unequal States of America, Economic Policy

Institute (2014); Inequality, Growing Apart, Economist (Sept.

21, 2013). That disparity translates into many other

inequalities in American life, including in the criminal justice

system. See, e.g., David Cole, No Equal Justice: Race and

Class in the American Criminal Justice System 8 (1999)

(“Police officers routinely use methods of investigation and

interrogation against members of racial minorities and the

poor that would be deemed unacceptable if applied to more

privileged members of the community.”). Under the present

economic circumstances, it is more important than ever to

recall that reverse sting operations like the one we consider

here are perilous to freedom, especially when they are aimed

at the poorest amongst us and backed by the promise of

immediate wealth. Just as “the Constitution doesn’t prefer

the rich over the poor,” United States v. Pineda-Moreno,

617 F.3d 1120 (9th Cir. 2010) (Kozinski, J., dissenting from

denial of rehearing en banc), it does not leave the

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UNITED STATES V. BLACK 11

impoverished defenseless against outrageous and unnecessary

law enforcement tactics designed to prey on their unique

vulnerabilities.

These concerns of fairness and equality are heightened by

the pressing threat that these sorts of extraordinary tactics

pose to liberty. The government verges too close to tyranny

when it sends its agents trolling through bars, tempts people

to engage in criminal conduct, and locks them up for

unconscionable periods of time when they fall for the scheme. 

Certainly, such tactics create a relationship between

government and governed at odds with the premises of our

democracy—a relationship more like that depicted in George

Orwell’s 1984 or Philip K. Dick’s The Minority Report.

4 As

Justice Sotomayor has warned, “[a]wareness that the

Government may be watching chills associational and

expressive freedoms” and “mayalter the relationship between

citizen and government in a way that is inimical to

democratic society.” United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945,

956 (2012) (Sotomayor, J., concurring) (quotation marks and

citation omitted). What is true of the government’s watching

is also true of the government’s sending undercover agents

into certain neighborhoods to see if their inhabitants can be

tempted to engage in conduct that leads them to prison. The

Due Process Clause forbids the tactics used here not only on

grounds of equality and fairness, but also because widespread

4 As the majority concedes, “The risk inherent in targeting such a

generalized population is that the government could create a criminal

enterprise that would not have come into being but for the temptation of

a big payday, a work of fiction spun out by government agents to persons

vulnerable to such a ploy who would not otherwise have thought of doing

such a robbery.” Black, 733 F.3d at 303.

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12 UNITED STATES V. BLACK

use of such law enforcement practices would chill the

exercise of many of our liberties.

In this era of mass incarceration, in which we already lock

up more of our population than any other nation on Earth, it

is especially curious that the government feels compelled to

invent fake crimes and imprison people for long periods of

time for agreeing to participate in them—people who but for

the government’s scheme might not have ever entered the

world of major felonies.5 Of course, the government also

controls the (often extraordinarily long) amount of time that

its targets spend in prison after reverse sting operations, as it

can specify the amount of drugs involved in the fake

conspiracies. See United States v. Kindle, 698 F.3d 401, 414

(7th Cir. 2012) (Posner, J., concurring and dissenting),

reheard en banc sub nom United States v. Mayfield (7th Cir.

Apr. 16, 2013) (condemning fictitious stash house stings as

a “disreputable tactic” because “[l]aw enforcement uses them

to increase the amount of drugs that can be attributed to the

persons stung, so as to jack up their sentences”). Do we

really need to add to the extraordinary number of our youth

whom we now imprison those our government can induce to

commit fictious crimes? Do we really need to make felons

out of those who are susceptible but have not yet committed

serious offenses (and might not ever do so)? Wouldn’t it be

more consistent with our constitutional values for the

government to provide positive social programs, such as

education, anti-drug, job-training, and housing services, that

help prevent crime rather than to conjure up plots that

encourage disadvantaged minority youth to join the large

number of their cohort who are already serving long periods

of incarceration? See, e.g., Jonathan Simon, Governing

5 On mass incarceration, see generally Alexander, The New Jim Crow.

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UNITED STATES V. BLACK 13

Through Crime (2007). Reverse sting operations of the sort

used in this case, aimed at people who look “bad” in “bad

parts of town,” are one of the most extreme and chilling

manifestations of an overzealous criminal system that too

often fails to respect the boundaries of law, good public

policy, and simple decency. See William J. Stuntz, The

Collapse of American Criminal Justice (2011).

Whatever the motivation for the law enforcement conduct

under review here and however effective that conduct may be

at leading to the arrest of actual or potential criminals, the

Constitution does not allow the tactics employed by the

government. Cf. Maryland v. King, 133 S. Ct. 1958, 1989

(Scalia, J., dissenting) (“Solving unsolved crimes is a noble

objective, but it occupies a lower place in the American

pantheon of noble objectives than the protection of our people

from suspicionless law-enforcement searches.”). The

outrageous government conduct doctrine is thus like the many

other constitutional rules meant to protect liberty that limit

law enforcement and require us to invalidate improper

government conduct even when it has led to a

conviction—even when it has been “bad people” whose rights

have been violated. See, e.g., Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S.

436 (1966); Rogers v. Richmond, 365 U.S. 534 (1961); Mapp

v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961). When the government decides

to troll through poverty-stricken neighborhoods, ordering its

agents to seek out people who look “bad” and test them at

random for willingness to break the law in order to obtain

large sums of money, its conduct is unacceptable.

Fundamental principles of justice place the tactics used by

the government in the Black cases squarely out of bounds. 

See Greene v. United States, 454 F.2d 783 (9th Cir. 1971). 

Accordingly, the indictment should be dismissed.

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14 UNITED STATES V. BLACK

III

Pre-Black precedent construed the constitutional

command regarding outrageous government conduct in a

wholly different manner than does the majority. In case after

case, we remarked that the government violates the

Constitution when it uses artifice to cause a crime and to

shape the nature and planning of that crime while targeting

people who are not already known to be involved in a

continuing series of similar crimes. See, e.g., United States

v. Williams, 547 F.3d 1187, 1199 (9th Cir. 2008); United

States v. Bonanno, 852 F.2d 434, 437–38 (9th Cir. 1988). As

Judge Noonan explains in his thorough and persuasive

dissent, application of that rule requires dismissal of the

indictment in these cases.

The majority, recognizing the force of these arguments,

repeatedly concedes that the government’s conduct was, at

best, of doubtful validity under our precedents. It nonetheless

upholds the law enforcement tactics by inventing a new,

nebulous six-factor test for outrageous government conduct. 

In its analysis, the majority places seemingly controlling

weight on two factors that have never before played a

significant role in our doctrine: (1) boasting by the defendants

about their prior criminal activity, none of which was ever

confirmed by the government during the reverse sting

operation; and (2) unsupported assertions by the government

that it deemed this kind of operation to be more effective at

fighting stash house robberies than the traditional means of

doing so.6 While purporting to adhere to precedent, this

6 The majority also suggests that the government’s conduct was not

outrageous because Agent Zayas did not exercise complete control over

every aspect ofthe reverse sting. Our cases, however, have never required

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UNITED STATES V. BLACK 15

reasoning takes a significant step beyond the limits on

government conduct that we have previously described,

opening the door to conduct that the Constitution does not

allow.

The panel first errs by asserting that what may have been

pure puffery by Simpson and Black about experience with

crime justified the government’s conduct. Before the Black

cases, we insisted that the government use such tactics only

against known or suspected criminals, persons for whom, at

the very least, there is reasonable cause for suspicion. See,

e.g., United States v. Gurolla, 333 F.3d 944, 950 (9th Cir.

2003) (placing decisive weight on the fact that “the

government did not initiate the criminal activity, but rather

sought to crack an ongoing operation”). That limit on

purportedly “random” police dragnets in vulnerable

communities helped to prevent abuses forbidden by the

Constitution.7See supra Part II. Here, by emphasizing some

total control or outright coercion. Here, the government created the

scenario, described the kind of robbery it wanted of the defendants, urged

Simpson and Black to involve more of their colleagues, and worked with

the defendants to shape the details of the planned operation. This level of

influence and control is more than enough to demonstrate intimate

government involvement in the development of the criminal scheme. See

Greene, 454 F.2d at 787 (“We do not believe the Government may

involve itselfso directly and continuously over such a long period of time

in the creation and maintenance of criminal operations, and yet prosecute

its collaborators.”).

7 The majority thus takes a substantial step beyond our precedent in

upholding police conduct where, by its own description, “the government

created the proposed crime, initiated contact with the defendants through

the CI’s approach at the Glendale bar, and set the bait—all without any

previous individualsuspicion—or even knowledge—aboutthe defendants’

criminal history or activities.” Black, 733 F.3d at 306.

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16 UNITED STATES V. BLACK

unsupported boasting by two of the defendants as a

significant factor in its analysis, the majority takes a long and

unjustified step away from our precedent. Mere puffery by

a person who has been approached at random in a bar is not

the same as evidence that the target is involved in criminal

activity—especially where the government has suggested to

him that he join in unlawful conduct that would free him from

his economic bonds. The fact that some people questioned at

random may show interest and then make statements

designed to enhance their credibility as potential conspirators

does not make the underlying government conduct any less

outrageous, especially where there is no evidence that these

boasts are true and where the government makes no effort to

check them.

The panel majority also errs in relying uncritically on the

government’s professed need for the use of its tactic. The

government may not engage in outrageous conduct that

violates the Due Process Clause merely because it asserts that

doing so will advance law enforcement goals. This is a

familiar rule in our criminal procedure jurisprudence. Our

nation has spent decades engaged in a so-called “War on

Drugs” and, for just as long, has struggled mightily to combat

narcotics trafficking. Nonetheless, we have never held that

the difficulties of preventing narcotics crime justify or excuse

constitutional violations—and we should not do so now. 

Inevitably, that logic points the way to a string of government

affidavits insisting that one or another hitherto illegal tactic

must be upheld as important to the achievement of law

enforcement objectives. Further, while reverse sting

operations may sometimes be a useful tool in the police

arsenal, the majority does not explain why these operations

would be inadequate if confined to targets known or

suspected to be involved in ongoing criminal activity. It is

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UNITED STATES V. BLACK 17

both extreme and implausible to assert that the only solution

to narcotics related crime is random good-citizenship tests of

people who look like “bad guys” in a “bad part of town.”

Ultimately, the most dangerous aspect of the majority

opinion is that it virtually eliminates constitutional limits on

outrageous government conduct. The majority reports that it

is “troubled” and “concerned,” that “the risks we have

identified in such a government-created fictional operation

are not to be taken lightly,” but that other considerations play

some unspecified role in helping to “mitigate[]” those

worries. It justifies this result by emphasizing that it is

looking to the totality of the circumstances. If ‘totality of the

circumstances’ is to have any meaning at all, however, we

cannot let each panel select its own “factors,” whether listed

in prior cases or not, and then conclude that in light of the

factors it has chosen the totality of the circumstances is not

enough to render the government’s conduct outrageous. That

is particularly true where, as here, on an objective analysis of

the six factors distilled from our prior cases by the panel, the

first five support a finding of a constitutional violation and

the sixth simply misstates our prior law. Under the panel’s

approach there would never be limits established on the

government’s flouting of the fundamental rights of its

citizens. In fact, its reasoning could easily be invoked in

support of similar reverse stings that result in the conviction

of individuals who do not brag of prior criminal experience

and who lack any criminal history at all. Thus, while the

defendants here may truly be bad guys, the tactics and

doctrine the majority endorses pose a threat to constitutional

values that extend far beyond the facts of this particular

reverse sting.

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18 UNITED STATES V. BLACK

The true lesson of the Black cases is that judges may

express concern about shocking police tactics, but will

ultimatelyuphold them—and that the outrageous government

conduct doctrine has little or no continued vitality in this

Circuit. We should therefore have reheard this case en banc

to make clear what our pre-Black precedent already states: the

law enforcement tactics used here are unacceptable under the

Constitution.

IV

As Judge Noonan warns in his dissent, “Today, our court

gives our approval to the government tempting persons in the

population at large currently engaged in innocent activity and

leading them into the commission of a serious crime, which

the government will then prosecute.” See Black, 733 F.3d at

313 (Noonan, J., dissenting). These cases demonstrate the

government’s willingness to infringe upon values of equality,

fairness, and liberty in its reverse sting operations, and to

employ law enforcement tactics that cross the line established

by the Due Process Clause. The panel majority erred in

upholding the conduct in which the government engaged

here, both in light of our precedent and as a matter of

constitutional principle. I therefore dissent.

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