Opinion ID: 22977
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Positional Predisposition

Text: 89 Reyes and Maldonado each argue that their respective cases present a question of positional predisposition, as that concept is described in United States v. Hollingsworth, 27 F.3d 1196 (7th Cir. 1994)(en banc), and that the trial court erred in refusing to charge the jury on the issue. We review the district court's refusal to give a requested jury instruction for an abuse of discretion. See United States v. Dixon, 185 F.3d 393, 402 (5th Cir. 1999). 90 In Hollingsworth, the Seventh Circuit concluded that [p]redisposition is not a purely mental state, the state of being willing to swallow the government bait. It has positional as well as dispositional force. 27 F.3d at 1200. To be positionally predisposed, the defendant must be so situated by reason of previous training or experience or occupation or acquaintances that it is likely that if the government had not induced him to commit the crime some criminal would have done so. Id. In United States v. Brace, 145 F.3d 247 (5th Cir. 1998)(en banc), this court, sitting en banc, vacated a panel opinion that had adopted Hollingsworth's positional predisposition doctrine. In so doing, we did not reject positional predisposition outright but instead concluded that the issue was not properly before the court. Id. at 265. We have not since considered the merits of positional predisposition, although in our recent opinion in United States v. Wise, 221 F.3d 140, 155-56 (5th Cir. 2000), we concluded that the defendant there did not show that he was not positionally predisposed under Hollingsworth. 91 Like we did in Wise, we here conclude that Reyes and Maldonado have failed to show that they were not positionally predisposed. 14 In Hollingsworth, the court stated that public officials such as Reyes are in the position to take bribes. And we conclude that Maldonado, a lobbyist and political activist, had the training, experience, and contacts to satisfy Hollingsworth's positional requirement. Further, we reject Reyes's and Maldonado's argument that the opportunity for ethnic minority investment in a major city project would not have occurred absent the government's sting operation. For one, the government had nothing to do with the Duddlesten plan; and it was that plan--not the Cayman Group--that presented the opportunity Reyes and Maldonado describe. Nor is it true that absent government involvement no minority investors existed to consider investing in the hotel project; to the contrary, Reyes, in his brief, notes that he had communicated with other minority groups interested in the Duddlesten proposal. We therefore conclude that the district court did not err in refusing the instruction.