Case Name: PEOPLE v. BROWN
Court: Michigan Court of Appeals
Jurisdiction: Michigan
Decision Date: 1987-09-21
Citations: 163 Mich. App. 273
Docket Number: Docket No. 97840
Parties: PEOPLE v BROWN
Judges: Before: Mackenzie, P.J., and Beasley and E. A. Quinnell, JJ.
Reporter: Michigan appeals reports; cases decided in the Michigan Court of Appeals.
Volume: 163
Pages: 273–297

Head Matter:
PEOPLE v BROWN
Docket No. 97840.
Submitted March 17, 1987, at Lansing.
Decided September 21, 1987.
Leave to appeal denied, 429 Mich —.
Basil W. Brown was bound over for trial in Ingham Circuit Court on two counts of delivery of marijuana, two counts of delivery of cocaine, one count of possession of cocaine, and one count of possession of marijuana following a preliminary examination in district court. Defendant, claiming that he had been entrapped and that there was insufficient evidence of delivery of cocaine, filed a motion to quash the information, which the trial court, James T. Kallman, J., denied. The Court of Appeals subsequently denied defendant’s application for leave to appeal. Defendant filed a motion in the trial court for a reconsideration of its ruling, which the trial court denied. The Court of Appeals denied a second application for leave to appeal. Defendant sought leave to appeal in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, in lieu of granting leave to appeal, remanded the case to the Court of Appeals for consideration as on leave granted. 428 Mich 851 (1987). The Court of Appeals issued an order staying the proceedings in the trial court.
The Court of Appeals held:
1. Police conduct consisting in this case of promising Katherine Roberts, who admitted to being a prostitute and heroin addict, a place to stay, food to eat, spending money, transportation to see her children, and the opportunity to enroll in a drug rehabilitation program in exchange for her continued relationship with defendant and her cooperation as an informant in an investigation of defendant is reprehensible police conduct but did not induce or instigate the commission of the crimes alleged despite the police’s expectation that the informant would, and she in fact did, gain access to the defendant’s apartment, have sex with him, smoke marijuana, and take her own syringes with which to inject herself with cocaine.
2. There was sufficient evidence at the preliminary examination to bind defendant over on charges of delivery of cocaine.
Affirmed.
References
Am Jur 2d, Criminal Law §§ 202 et seq.
Burden of proof as to entrapment defense—state case. 52 ALR4th 775.
Beasley, J., concurred separately to note that defendant, by choosing not to testify at the preliminary examination or evidentiary hearing in circuit court, left uncontradicted the testimony of Roberts and the police investigator as to the nature of the relationship between Roberts and defendant and the conduct by police which defendant assailed as entrapment. Judge Beasley concluded from Roberts’ testimony that the illicit relationship between defendant and Roberts as well as the use of marijuana and cocaine in the course of their liaison were ongoing for a period of years prior to the investigative efforts of the police. Thus, Judge Beasley concluded that it cannot be said, nor has defendant shown by a preponderance of the evidence, that the police instigated the alleged offenses or induced defendant to commit them. With regard to the question whether there was sufficient evidence to support defendant’s bindover on the cocaine delivery counts, Judge Beasley noted that the evidence at preliminary examination established that an actual, constructive or attempted transfer of cocaine from defendant to Roberts occurred in this case, satisfying the controlled substances act definition of the term "delivery.”
Opinion of the Court
1. Criminal Law — Defenses — Entrapment.
The defense of entrapment consists of (1) intolerable police conduct that (2) induces or instigates the commission of a crime.
Concurrence by Beasley, J.
2. Criminal Law — Defenses — Entrapment.
The objective test for entrapment focuses on whether the actions of the police were so reprehensible under the circumstances that public policy will not permit the defendant’s conviction to stand; under this test the defendant’s guilt or innocence is irrelevant, and the burden is on the defendant to show by a preponderance of the evidence that he was entrapped.
3. Criminal Law — Appeal — Defenses — Entrapment.
The Court of Appeals will not reverse a trial court’s ruling on an entrapment motion unless the ruling is clearly erroneous.
Frank J. Kelley, Attorney General, Louis J. Caruso, Solicitor General, Donald E. Martin, Prosecuting Attorney, and Paula M. Zera, Chief, Criminal Division, for the people.
Dunnings & Frawley, P.C. (by Stuart J. Dun- nings III and Stuart J. Dunnings, Jr.), for defendant.
Before: Mackenzie, P.J., and Beasley and E. A. Quinnell, JJ.
Circuit judge, sitting on the Court of Appeals by assignment.

Opinion:
E. A. Quinnell, J.
The facts of this case are set forth in the concurring opinion of Judge Beasley.
We agree with Judge Beasley's disposition of the delivery issue.
We also agree with his result as to the entrapment issue, but only reluctantly.
We agree that some of the police conduct is merely distasteful; after all, if the kgb can use sex to gain access to the American Embassy in Moscow, we suppose that the Organized Crime and Public Corruption Unit of the Department of Attorney General can use sex to gain access to the defendant's apartment in Lansing. We find other aspects of the police behavior to be truly reprehensible. Their confidential informant was a known prostitute, known heroin addict, and known user of other illicit drugs. She was otherwise vulnerable in that an additional prostitution charge was pending against her. They promised her a place to stay, food to eat, spending money, transportation to see her children, and the opportunity to enroll in a drug rehabilitation program if she would agree to work as an undercover agent for them with regard to this defendant and perhaps as many as three other investigations. The cooperation expected of her was that she would gain access to the defen dant's apartment, have sex with him, and smoke marijuana, and they expected her to take her own syringes so that she could inject herself with cocaine. Admittedly the agents informed the informant to avoid sex if she could, but that admonition ignores reality. All of this activity took place after the agent had professed to the informant at the beginning of their relationship that the police wanted to help the informant get off drugs and make sure she had a place to stay.
Both during the entrapment hearings at the trial court level and on appeal the police attempted to justify their actions by saying, in effect: "We only expected her to do what she had been doing before." Of course, what the informant had been doing before was committing crimes involving the use of illicit drugs, and engaging in a meretricious relationship with the defendant. In our view, the fact that such acts had taken place in the past is not an excuse for the police to promote such activity.
However, this reprehensibility concerns the relationship between the police and the informant, not the relationship between the police/informant and the defendant. Starting with People v Moore, 73 Mich App 514, 517; 252 NW2d 507 (1977), several panels of this Court have determined that the defense of entrapment consists of
(1) intolerable police conduct that (2) induces or instigates the commission of a crime.
See also People v Barker, 97 Mich 253, 255; 293 NW2d 787 (1980), rev'd on other grounds 411 Mich 866 (1981); People v Larcinese, 108 Mich App 511; 310 NW2d 49 (1981); People v Weatherford, 129 Mich App 359, 361; 341 NW2d 199 (1983); People v Crawford, 143 Mich App 348; 372 NW2d 550 (1985), lv gtd on other grounds 424 Mich 879 (1986); People v Mulkey, 153 Mich App 737, 739; 396 NW2d 514 (1986).
The reprehensible police conduct here could be considered as a causative factor in the commission of the charged offenses only in the broadest meaning of the term "cause"—if the police had not dealt most unfairly with the informant, she probably would not have contacted the defendant, and therefore the charged offenses would not have occurred or (as to the possession counts) would not have been discovered. However, the police treatment of the informant did not induce or instigate the commission of the crimes, it merely provided an incentive for the informant to contact the defendant. Even the police approval of the informant's taking syringes into the defendant's apartment for shooting up with cocaine, reprehensible though such approval was, did not induce the defendant to commit the delivery of cocaine, since the informant could have used the cocaine without her own syringe, and in fact did so on at least one occasion.
Our research has not uncovered any Michigan Supreme Court decision which has specifically addressed the question whether reprehensible police conduct must have induced or instigated the crime. The policy considerations expressed by Justice Stewart's dissent in People v Russell, 411 US 423; 93 S Ct 1637; 36 L Ed 2d 366 (1973), and by the Michigan Supreme Court in People v Turner, 390 Mich 7; 210 NW2d 336 (1973), suggest that there may be no need for the defendant to prove that the reprehensible police conduct induced or instigated the crime. However, given the facts of this case and the ten-year history of that requirement in the Court of Appeals, we cannot find the trial court's ruling that defendant had not proved entrapment to be clearly erroneous.
Both the trial judge and Judge Beasley mention defendant's failure to testify at the entrapment hearing. His decision to testify or not to testify is totally irrelevant to a determination of whether he sustained his burden of proving entrapment.
Judge Beasley also suggests that the social menace represented by the use of cocaine is so serious that some extraordinary police measures should be tolerated. We have searched in vain for a case that suggests that a balancing test should be used in entrapment cases to compare the reprehensibility of the police conduct and the reprehensibility of the offense charged. If there were authority for such a position, we would have no difficulty in finding that the conduct of the police was more reprehensible than the conduct of the defendant. The record indicates that, although the initial relationship between defendant and the informant developed out of the informant's being a prostitute, that relationship developed into a friendship such that, in more recent times, the informant typically went to the defendant's apartment, the two engaged in sex, and shared whatever marijuana or cocaine the defendant happened to have. There is no suggestion that the defendant is in any sense a dealer; in fact, the hiatus that existed in the relationship between the informant and the defendant over the $130 apparently resulted from the informant's agreement to buy some drugs for the defendant, not from the defendant. The defendant's treatment of the informant was certainly not exemplary, but the police conduct in general, and the police treatment of the informant in particular, were worse.
Despite our misgivings and reservations, we must affirm.
Affirmed.
Mackenzie, P.J., concurred.
The timing of her involvement in the drug rehabilitation program is not clear from the record. At the preliminary examination held on December 9, 1985, agent Kalder testified: "We have planned to enroll her in a drug rehabilitation program after the preliminary exam." However, it also appeared that the informant previously had spent one night in a drug rehabilitation program but had left that program because of her own desire. Presumably the one-night exposure to the program took place after the informant had performed her part of the deal and the defendant was arrested, but before the preliminary examination.