Opinion ID: 526505
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Alleged Outrageous Conduct by the Government

Text: 3 The first issue is whether the conviction of Feekes should be reversed because the government engaged in outrageous conduct while investigating him. See United States v. Russell, 411 U.S. 423, 93 S.Ct. 1637, 36 L.Ed.2d 366; United States v. Podolsky, 798 F.2d 177 (7th Cir.1986); United States v. Valona, 834 F.2d 1334 (7th Cir.1987). 1 Feekes' argument is intricate. He claimed at trial to have been entrapped into selling heroin by a government informant, a fellow inmate, but his entrapment defense was rejected by the jury. The claim of outrageous conduct centers on the government's failure to wire or otherwise monitor the informant when he solicited Feekes, and as a result essential evidence of entrapment--the evidence of what exactly the informant said to Feekes and what he replied--was unavailable. 4 This is certainly one of the few--if not the first--times a criminal defendant has complained about the government's failure to engage in electronic eavesdropping, and we are quite reluctant to hold that the government's failure to invade, or to invade enough, an individual's privacy during an investigation constitutes outrageous conduct. 2 Feekes' argument is premised on the unreliability of the informant in this case, on whose word the jury had to rely in the absence of monitored conversations. But this argument overlooks the obvious; it seems self-evident that informants are often an unsavory lot. The value of an informant stems from his opportunity to gain the confidence of participants in a criminal enterprise and glean information therefrom, an opportunity seldom available to ordinary, honest, law-abiding citizens. 3 Feekes' contention would require the government to utilize electronic eavesdropping devices every time an unsavory informant participates in an investigation. 5 The decision to employ electronic eavesdropping devices on the informant's person may well threaten the ultimate success of the investigation, as well as the safety of the informant, arising from the unplanned discovery of the listening apparatus by the subject of the investigation. Considering the setting and the nature of the suspected crime, see Valona, 834 F.2d at 1343, the decision not to employ electronic eavesdropping devices on an informant in prison is certainly not outrageous; the chance of discovery runs high and the consequences severe. 6 Finally, Feekes catalogues for this Court the reasons why the informant in this case was not to be trusted. But this information, rather than being argued in this Court, properly belonged before the jury, whose role is to reach credibility determinations. By convicting Feekes the jury manifested its belief in the truth of the informant's testimony, despite Feekes' argument to the contrary. Although a complete recorded catalogue of all the conversations between Feekes and the informant may have set the facts more definitively--here the jury believed it would have settled along the lines the government argues--in this instance the failure to do so is not necessarily outrageous. Rather Feekes had the opportunity, which he exploited, to attack the informant's credibility through cross-examination and other witnesses' testimony bearing on the informant's credibility.