Opinion ID: 757749
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Motion to Dismiss for Outrageous Government Conduct

Text: 25 Nolan-Cooper's first contention on appeal is that the district court erred in rejecting her motion to dismiss the indictment. That motion was premised on the claim that the government's conduct in investigating this matter was outrageous and constituted a violation of her due process rights. According to Nolan-Cooper, Agent Oubre's cultivation of a romantic and ultimately sexual relationship with her was part of his investigative strategy and, as such, was an unjustifiable intrusion into the most personal aspects of her life in violation of her fundamental (due process and privacy) rights. The district court saw it differently. While the court found that Agent Oubre's conduct was reprehensible, see Nolan-Cooper, 957 F.Supp. at 664 n. 30, it concluded that: 26 The court does not find that in the totality of the circumstances a single incident by the undercover agent which was not approved or planned by the Government agents in charge of the investigation who had exercised due diligence and control over the activities of the undercover agents rises to the level of outrageous governmental conduct. 27 Att. at 27. While we reach the result by a slightly different route, we believe that the district court's rejection of Nolan-Cooper's motion to dismiss the indictment was not in error. Our standard of review is mixed. We exercise plenary review over the district court's legal conclusions, and review any challenges to the court's factual findings for clear error. See United States v. Voigt, 89 F.3d 1050, 1064 (3d Cir.1996). 28
29 It is the law of this circuit that a criminal defendant may raise a due process challenge to an indictment against her based on a claim that the government employed outrageous law enforcement investigative techniques. See Voigt, 89 F.3d at 1064. The notion that misconduct by the government in investigating crime could give rise to a due process violation traces its modern roots to Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 72 S.Ct. 205, 96 L.Ed. 183 (1952), in which the Court vacated the conviction of a suspected drug pusher whose stomach had been forcibly pumped so that the police could attempt to obtain incriminating evidence likely found therein. Twenty years later, in the now-famous dictum which spawned the so-called outrageous conduct defense, the Court affirmed that Rochin, while rare, was not a unique case: 30 [W]e 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. 31 United States v. Russell, 411 U.S. 423, 431-32, 93 S.Ct. 1637, 36 L.Ed.2d 366 (1973) (citing Rochin ). 32 The Court revisited this dictum in Hampton v. United States, 425 U.S. 484, 96 S.Ct. 1646, 48 L.Ed.2d 113 (1976), in which the defendant, relying on Russell, argued for the application of a due process based outrageous misconduct defense. Although the Court rejected his claim, the legal viability of the defense was maintained by a narrow margin. 4 Yet, shortly thereafter, signs appeared that that narrow margin was beginning to shift. In United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727, 100 S.Ct. 2439, 65 L.Ed.2d 468 (1980), the government employed a confederate to distract a bank official while agents rifled through his briefcase and found documents that were eventually used in the prosecution of some of the bank's customers. The customers could not challenge the search under the Fourth Amendment because they did not have a cognizable privacy interest in the briefcase, and the Court held that its supervisory power similarly did not authorize a federal court to suppress the evidence. See 447 U.S. at 735, 100 S.Ct. 2439. Justice Powell, author of the Hampton concurrence, wrote for the Court: 33 But even if we assume that the unlawful briefcase search was so outrageous as to offend fundamental canons of decency and fairness, ... the fact remains that [t]he limitations of the Due Process Clause ... come into play only when the Government activity in question violates some protected right of the defendant. 34 Id. at 737 n. 9, 100 S.Ct. 2439 (citing Hampton, 425 U.S. at 490, 96 S.Ct. 1646 (plurality opinion) (internal citations omitted)). 35 While one could read the Payner dictum narrowly to say merely that a defendant may raise the outrageousness defense only when it is his or her rights that have been violated (and not, for example, the privacy rights of others), some have read Justice Powell's adoption of the Hampton plurality's language in Payner as a sign that a majority of the Court no longer believed in the viability of the defense. See United States v. Miller, 891 F.2d 1265, 1272 (7th Cir.1989) (Easterbrook, J., concurring). 5 While Judge Easterbrook's viewpoint may ultimately prevail, and while it appears that the viability of the doctrine is hanging by a thread, see, e.g., Tucker, 28 F.3d at 1426-27, and Boyd, 55 F.3d at 241, we have, since Payner, concluded that we have no reason to doubt that the Court continues to recognize a due process claim premised upon outrageous law enforcement investigative techniques. Voigt, 89 F.3d at 1064. Many of the other circuits have done the same. See United States v. Mosley, 965 F.2d 906, 909 (10th Cir.1992) (collecting cases recognizing the viability of the defense from the D.C., First, Fifth, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits). 36 While continuing to recognize, in theory, the outrageousness defense, we have nonetheless observed that, because of the extraordinary nature of the doctrine, the judiciary has been extremely hesitant to uphold claims that law enforcement conduct violates the Due Process clause. See Voigt, 89 F.3d at 1065; United States v. Jannotti, 673 F.2d 578, 608 (3d Cir.1982) (in banc ). The First Circuit similarly has declared the outrageous government misconduct doctrine moribund in light of the fact that, in practice, courts have rejected its application with almost monotonous regularity. United States v. Santana, 6 F.3d 1, 4 (1st Cir.1993) (The banner of outrageous misconduct is often raised but seldom saluted.). Indeed, since Hampton, the only opinion upholding the application of the defense is the opinion for a divided panel of this court in United States v. Twigg, 588 F.2d 373 (3d Cir.1978). 6 Twigg, however, involved a quite egregious case of government overinvolvement in which the government's undercover operative essentially concocted and conducted the entire illicit scheme. Although Twigg rightly suggested that no justifying social objective is served when law enforcement creates new crimes for the sake of bringing charges against a suspect that the government itself has persuaded into participating in wrongdoing, see id. at 379 (citing United States v. West, 511 F.2d 1083, 1085 (3d Cir.1975)), it distinguished its facts from the situation where an undercover agent becomes involved in the operation after the criminal scheme has been created. See Twigg, 588 F.2d at 380. Thus, Twigg itself is of little help to Nolan-Cooper. 7 37 While we reaffirmed the cognizability of a due process claim premised on outrageous government conduct in Voigt, supra, that case does not shed much light on how we should analyze such claims because it deals specifically with deliberate intrusions by the government into the attorney-client relationship. See Voigt, 89 F.3d at 1067. Voigt observes that the showing required to make out an outrageous conduct claim, is by no means pellucid. Voigt, 89 F.3d at 1064. And, other courts have experienced considerable difficulty in translating outrageous misconduct into a defined set of behavioral norms. See Santana, 6 F.3d at 3-4. One parsing of the Russell dictum which spawned the defense suggests that some variant of the fundamental fairness standard should be applied as the sounding line for outrageousness. Id. at 4. And a survey of the case law reports that: 38 Although the requirement of outrageousness has been stated in several different ways by various courts, the thrust of each of these formulations is that the challenged conduct must be shocking, outrageous, and clearly intolerable.... The cases make it clear that this is an extraordinary defense reserved for only the most egregious circumstances. It is not to be invoked each time the government acts deceptively or participates in a crime that it is investigating. Nor is it intended merely as a device to circumvent the predisposition test in the entrapment defense. 39 Mosley, 965 F.2d at 910. Though lacking in mathematical precision, the shocking, outrageous, and clearly intolerable standard provides sufficient guidance to courts attempting to assess whether particular government conduct is fundamentally unfair and thereby offends due process. See Santana, 6 F.3d at 4. It also underscores how rare application of the Due Process clause is in these circumstances. 40
41 Other courts have considered due process challenges specifically premised on alleged sexual misconduct by government operatives in the course of their investigations. Two such cases are particularly instructive on the thorny issue of how we should evaluate the use of sexual or emotional intimacy in undercover operations. The first is United States v. Simpson, 813 F.2d 1462 (9th Cir.1987), in which the FBI employed a known prostitute and heroin user as an informant in an undercover investigation of a suspected heroin dealer. After befriending the defendant, the informant, acting on her own initiative, became sexually intimate with him. The informant subsequently introduced the defendant to other undercover agents posing as potential heroin purchasers, and he was ultimately arrested after an arranged deal with one of the agents was consummated. See id. at 1464. Although the FBI did not encourage the informant to use sex in carrying out her assignment, at some point the agency became aware of her sexual involvement with the defendant and decided not to terminate her participation in the investigation. See id. at 1467-68. 42 The defendant argued that the informant's use of sex as a means of gaining his trust through intimacy, and the government's continued employment of the informant after learning of her sexual involvement with the defendant, constituted outrageous misconduct and an invasion of his privacy and autonomy rights. The Ninth Circuit disagreed, reasoning that: 43 the deceptive creation and/or exploitation of an intimate relationship does not exceed the boundary of permissible law enforcement tactics.... The betrayed suspect might feel foolish or insulted but a suspect cannot complain of government impropriety based on the use of deception alone. And, Simpson does not claim that he was physically or psychologically coerced into developing a close relationship with [the informant].... The due process clause does not protect Simpson from voluntarily reposing his trust in one who turns out to be unworthy of it. 44 Id. at 1466; see also Miller, 891 F.2d at 1268 (rejecting outrageousness claim when government used informant who previously had had a sexual relationship with defendant). Importantly, however, the Simpson court stated that it need not decide at this time whether the use of sex as a law enforcement tool would 'shock the conscience' under circumstances where the government is clearly responsible, as would be the case if [the informant] had been a law enforcement officer rather than a paid informant. Id. at 1468 n. 4 (emphasis added). 45 Despite this distinction, the Simpson court made a number of general observations about the difficulties in finding the government's use or condonation of sex by undercover operatives sufficiently outrageous so as to rise to the level of a due process violation. The court observed: 46 To win a suspect's confidence, an informant must make overtures of friendship and trust and must enjoy a great deal of freedom in deciding how best to establish a rapport with the suspect. In a particular case the informant might perceive a need to establish a physical as well as emotional bond with the suspect. We see no principled way to identify a fixed point along the continuum from casual physical contact to intense physical bonding beyond which the relationship becomes shocking when entertained by an informant. Rather, any attempt to distinguish between holding hands, hugging, kissing, engaging in sexual foreplay, and having sexual intercourse on a regular basis in order to decide when an informant has gone too far would require us to draw upon our peculiarly personal notions of human sexuality and social mores. The Supreme Court has rightly indicated that the outrageous conduct doctrine ought not to be applied in so subjective a manner.... 47 [W]e refuse to draw fine lines based on the level of emotional intimacy inhering in a particular informant-suspect relationship.... Exploiting an emotionally intimate relationship between lovers seems no more egregious than exploiting an emotionally intimate relationship between family members. Second, courts are not well equipped to assess the degree of intimacy perceived by particular suspects ... such that individual judicial determinations that sexual relationships were sufficiently intimate to bar prosecution would lack the universality of condemnation required by the due process clause. 48 Id. at 1466-67. 49 While Simpson dealt only with the government's use of civilian informants (in contrast to undercover government agents), we believe that many of the same considerations that troubled the Ninth Circuit also arise here. We agree that trying to fit a subjective notion such as intimacy into the framework of the Due Process clause is an immensely difficult task. Yet, our view of this problem may differ from Simpson in at least one significant respect. Although we agree that undercover agents cannot be deprived of the ability to develop strong bonds with their targets in order for investigations to proceed, and that it is exceedingly difficult to identify the point at which physical contact and emotional intimacy between an undercover agent and his or her target suspect becomes outrageous as a matter of constitutional law, we believe that such a point does exist. Therefore we must endeavor to determine whether it has been reached on the facts of this case. 50 The only federal appellate decision that deals specifically with a sexual relationship between a suspect and an undercover government agent is United States v. Cuervelo, 949 F.2d 559 (2d Cir.1991). In that case, the defendant was the subject of a government operation designed to ferret out a drug conspiracy. The undercover DEA agent conducting the investigation testified that he tried to establish a love interest between himself and the defendant, and, according to the defendant, they had sexual relations on at least fifteen occasions. 949 F.2d at 561, 563. In addition, the agent allegedly gave the defendant gifts of money, clothes, and jewelry, and wrote her a number of love letters. Id. at 563. The defendant moved to dismiss the indictment, which the district court denied without holding an evidentiary hearing. The Second Circuit remanded, holding that a hearing was required. Id. at 569. 51 Based on its review of such cases as Simpson, the court stated that in order to make out a successful outrageousness claim in these circumstances, at a minimum, the defendant must show the following: 52 (1) That the government consciously set out to use sex as a weapon in its investigatory arsenal, or acquiesced in such conduct for its own purposes upon learning that such a relationship existed; 53 (2) That the government agent initiated a sexual relationship, or allowed it to continue to exist, to achieve governmental ends; and 54 (3) That the sexual relationship took place during or close to the period covered by the indictment and was entwined with the events charged therein. 55 949 F.2d at 567. It is important to note that Cuervelo only held that an evidentiary hearing is warranted if the defendant raises allegations meeting these criteria. See id. Yet, there is little doubt that Cuervelo envisioned these criteria as the standard to be applied on the merits since the court noted that, at the merits stage, the district court would have to consider the following questions (which essentially address the same issues): 56 (a) To what extent is the undercover agent's conduct attributable to the government (i.e. did the government actively or passively acknowledge or encourage the sexual relationship)? 57 (b) What purpose(s) did the agent's sexual conduct serve, if any? 58 (c) Did the agent act on his own initiative or under the direction (or with the approval) of his agency? 59 (d) Who initiated the relationship? 60 (e) When did the alleged sexual relations end? 61 Cuervelo, 949 F.2d at 568. 62 We believe that Cuervelo 's minimum criteria standard effectively captures the core issues underlying an outrageous government conduct claim premised on sexual misconduct. Accordingly, we will adopt the Cuervelo standard as the law of this circuit, with one modification. Cuervelo appears to require the defendant to introduce evidence demonstrating that the government knew that its undercover agent had engaged or was engaging in a sexual relationship with him or her. We believe that this requirement may be too stringent, and could encourage supervisory agents to turn a blind eye to the conduct of their operatives. Hence, we believe that the defendant need only show that the government consciously set out to use sex as a weapon in its investigatory arsenal, or acquiesced in such conduct for its own purposes once it knew or should have known that such a relationship existed. In addition, we emphasize that the Cuervelo criteria, while useful, should not be applied rigidly; the ultimate determination to be made on the merits is whether the government's conduct was so shocking, outrageous, and clearly intolerable that Due Process is offended. In most cases involving sexual misconduct by government agents, however, our version of the Cuervelo factors should provide an appropriate framework for this analysis.
63 We begin with the final Cuervelo factor, the timing of the alleged misconduct with respect to the period covered by the indictment. To the extent that the sexual relationship between Nolan-Cooper and Agent Oubre arose out of their ostensible money laundering business relationship, it cannot be disputed that the two were intertwined. Although Nolan-Cooper pled guilty to only one count of the superseding indictment (Count 18) that was premised on conduct which occurred after February 18, 1995, the overarching conspiracy count on which she was convicted (Count 3) alleges that the conspiracy existed until March 24, 1995 and encompasses seven alleged overt acts which occurred after February 18. 64 At the same time, we find it significant that the only incident of sexual intercourse found by the district court occurred within a month before the investigation was completed, and apparently well after Oubre had gathered the necessary evidence against Nolan-Cooper. This would suggest that while the sexual relationship arose out of the context of the investigation, it was not necessarily intertwined with Nolan-Cooper's offense conduct. Nolan-Cooper rejoins that we should not limit our focus to the one incident of sexual intercourse; instead, she argues that we should assess the pervasive pattern of romancing which she alleges Oubre undertook from virtually the outset of the undercover investigation. Since we have substantial doubts, see discussion infra, whether the alleged romancing significantly impacts our analysis, it appears that the timing of the sexual misconduct favors the government's position. Although the conduct underlying Count 18 and comprising some of the overt acts alleged in Count 5 occurred after the sexual misconduct, in the larger factual context of this case we do not believe this alters the balance or the timing question, especially since Nolan-Cooper does not seriously argue about the role of the post February 18, 1995 criminal conduct. 65 The remaining Cuervelo factors all relate to whether the government and/or the undercover agent used or acquiesced in the use of the sexual relationship to serve an investigatory or other governmental end. We must inquire whether the government intentionally set out to use sex as an investigatory tool, or acquiesced in its use once it knew or should have known of the relationship. We also must determine whether the agent initiated a sexual relationship or allowed such a relationship to exist to further governmental ends. See Cuervelo, 949 F.2d at 567. As part of this inquiry we also assess whether the agent or the defendant initiated the sexual relationship. While it is ultimately a question of law for us to decide whether the agent's misconduct gives rise to a due process violation, it should be apparent that this stage of the inquiry also involves significant questions of fact. As noted previously, we review such findings for clear error. 66 The district court found that the sexual intercourse that occurred on February 18, 1995, was not designed to further any investigatory end. Furthermore, the district court found no evidence of any discussions among the investigating agents and their superiors concerning the use of sex as an inducement, reward or lure to obtain Nolan-Cooper's participation in the conspiracy. In sum, the district court found that there was no evidence of any nexus or connection between the alleged sex and the investigation. While Nolan-Cooper makes a veiled attack on these conclusions in her brief--contending that the district court completely ignored that Agent Oubre's relationship with Nolan-Cooper was an integral part of the total picture--under the applicable clear error standard of review such a challenge falls short. It is true, as Nolan-Cooper asserts, that Agent Oubre initiated the dinners, nightclubbing, and other socializing that occurred during the course of the investigation. However, the district court expressly found that Nolan-Cooper presented insufficient evidence that the Government agents initiated or allowed a sexual relationship to blossom. Att. at 25. 67 Accepting, as we must, the district court's finding that the sexual intercourse between Agent Oubre and Nolan-Cooper was not designed to serve any investigatory ends, we conclude that this one instance of sexual misconduct alone does not give rise to a due process violation within the extremely narrow confines of the outrageous government conduct doctrine. We simply do not believe that a one-time sexual encounter that served no investigatory purpose occurring near the end of an investigation can satisfy the difficult burden described supra. Even if it were to be concluded that Oubre's supervisors should have known that a sexual relationship existed after February 18, 1995, the record reflects that by that point the case against Nolan-Cooper had already been made and there is no proffer that any acquiescence at that point would have served any investigatory purposes. The Cuervelo framework contemplates conduct that is designed to achieve investigatory or other governmental ends; failing this, that case cannot support Nolan-Cooper's claim. 8 68 This conclusion leaves us with Nolan-Cooper's contention that Agent Oubre's development of a romantic relationship in the months preceding the one incident of sexual intercourse changes the calculus. While this activity (by which we mean the dinners, nightclubbing, partying, etc.) does appear to be directed at establishing and maintaining a close relationship between agent and suspect, we are not persuaded that this particular conduct--either alone or in tandem with the one instance of intercourse--is egregious enough to make out a due process violation. As Simpson suggests, the mere fact that an undercover operative establishes a level of intimacy with his or her target does not alone necessarily give rise to a constitutional claim. 69 Like the defendant in Simpson, Nolan-Cooper was apparently quite willing to develop a close bond with Agent Oubre. 9 The mere fact that Oubre acted upon this willingness cannot in itself be outrageous conduct, as the due process clause does not protect [a defendant] from voluntarily reposing [her] trust in one who turns out to be unworthy of it. Simpson, 813 F.2d at 1466. Moreover, we observe that much of the romantic conduct alleged here, on its face, is not that different from conduct by undercover operatives which we regularly find acceptable in cases where there is no apparent romantic undercurrent. It is not at all uncommon to find a heterosexual male undercover agent providing lavish entertainment to a heterosexual male suspect as a means of establishing rapport. Cf. Simpson, 813 F.2d at 1466 (noting that informants must enjoy a great deal of freedom in deciding how to establish rapport with suspects). We cannot agree that the emotional intimacy that may inure in the bond that an undercover agent develops with a suspect, without more, can satisfy the narrow confines of the outrageous government conduct doctrine. 70 In sum, that something more is not present on the facts as found by the district court. Since Nolan-Cooper cannot satisfy our version of the Cuervelo analysis, we will affirm the order of the district court denying Nolan-Cooper's motion to dismiss the indictment. 10