Opinion ID: 1367509
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: testing predisposition alone is an invalid approach to the entrapment defenselet's look both ways

Text: I dissent in this case in the belief that the creation of the entire environment for a crime to be consequently committed, as in this case a reverse sting, requires at least judicial examination of the objective (character of police conduct) test of entrapment. Kummer, 481 N.W.2d 437. I find the majority here, and these subjective test cases in general, hopelessly confused and unnecessarily complicated. We should step back and relate to a test that examines the entire situation. Consequently, I favor an approach that offers the analysis afforded by Florida and New Mexico and which considers: what the police did; what the defendant did in response; and determines whether entrapment existed as a viable defense or, more properly, exoneration. Generally, this approach is also the course pursued by the Michigan Supreme Court in Juillet, 475 N.W.2d 786. See Zale, supra, 1992 Det.C.L.Rev. 933. The test of predisposition of the accused to break the law must be independent and not the product of activities of law enforcement. Jacobson, ___ U.S. at ___, 112 S.Ct. at 1541. Furthermore, as Jacobson determined, in a black letter decision on the most highly contested case between majority and dissent: Indeed, the proposition that the accused must be predisposed prior to contact with law enforcement officers is so firmly established that the Government conceded the point at oral argument[.] Jacobson, at ___, n. 2, 112 S.Ct. at 1541, n. 2. Justice White, in the same footnote in the majority opinion, reaffirmed what he found stated fifty-one years earlier in Sorrells. The minority concept would test predisposition not upon initial contact, but only when the government actually suggests commission of the specific crime. The minority permits education by the state to create predisposition to defeat any entrapment defense. See Justice O'Connor's dissent in Jacobson, at ___, 112 S.Ct. at 1544. An interesting and persuasive critique of Jacobson is currently provided by Maureen Duffy in Note, Jacobson v. United States: Do The Ends Justify The Means In Government Stings?, 24 Loy.U.Chi.L.J. 77, 107 (1992): The Court reached a just decision when it reversed Jacobson's conviction. Unfortunately, its silence on the issue of appropriate government conduct may suggest to investigators that the ends will continue to justify the means in sting operations. As long as the government can demonstrate later that the defendant had a guilty state of mind, there is no apparent check on its activities. Until the Court establishes some reasonable limits, Big Brother will remain alive and well. In support and substantiation, note should be taken of the analysis provided eleven years earlier by Ted K. Yasuda, Note, Entrapment as a Due Process Defense: Developments After Hampton v. United States, 57 Ind.L.J. 89, 129-30 (1982) (emphasis in original), where he concluded with a message obviously heard by what today may be a majority of state courts: The extensive government aiding and solicitation of crimes disclosed in recent cases demonstrate the inadequacy of existing theories of entrapment. Although insisting that the defense of entrapment is narrowly based upon a statutory exception for the nonpredisposed, the Supreme Court has repeatedly acknowledged in dicta that due process may also set limits to government involvement in crime. The lower federal courts in turn have recognized a due process defense which would supplement the otherwise statutory defense of entrapment. The result, however, has been far from satisfactory. The federal courts have failed to formulate the constitutional basis for their insight that the avowedly statutory test for entrapment should not be exclusively controlling. The Supreme Court's reference to conduct that shocks the conscience has been deficient as a basis on which to develop standards for safeguarding due process in the entrapment context: subjective assessments of outrageousness have largely been the order of the day. Moreover, the resulting mixturea statutory defense which must be supplemented, due to its own shortcomings, by a vague constitutional mandate prohibiting outrageous government undercover activityis unwieldy and internally inconsistent. It is left unexplained why part of the entrapment defense is of constitutional dimension, while another part is not, as if successfully inducing criminal conduct on the part of those not originally ready and willing to commit crime were somehow not outrageous. A more unitary theory of entrapment governed by a more objective inquiry is needed. Entrapment should be squarely founded on the principle that the manufacturing of crime serves no legitimate purpose, and that where crime is manufactured, prosecution must be barred as a matter of due process. The inquiry relevant for the defense should simply be whether the government's conduct has led the defendant to commit a crime which he otherwise would not have committed. Predisposition is relevant: a person not already predisposed to commit a crime is not likely to do so independently, and there can be no legitimate reason to overcome such an individual's reluctance to engage in crime. The presence of predisposition should not be dispositive, however. A bare predisposition to commit an act does not establish that the defendant would have acted in the real world as he did under the artificial circumstances provided by the government's actions. Predisposition, if established, should be only one of several factors to determine whether a crime has been manufactured, the artificiality of the government's aid and encouragement, and the likelihood that a third party would have played the role acted by the government being at least equally relevant. Such an approach avoids the inadequacies of the predisposition test for entrapment, as well as the subjectivity inherent in appraisals of outrageousness. An entrapment defense must ask the right question in order to safeguard adequately the right to be free from government conduct which creates, rather than detects, crime. It is my conclusion that no rational, practical or fair minded adaptation for entrapment can be developed by solely considering the defendant's intent without considering the acts of instigation made by officers of the law to arrange for a crime to occur so that arrest can be made. It appears doubtful that either the subjective or objective approach could be structured in such a way that it alone would provide a rational and fair defense. The best approach would be one that incorporates both tests with some modificationsthat is, one that first would allow the defendant to raise the defense by a pretrial motion in which the propriety of the police conduct is challenged as creating too great a risk of inducing an innocent man to commit a crime. At this stage also, the government should be required to show that it had probable cause for singling out the defendant for affirmative action. This should be judged on the basis of what was known at the time of such action. Even if a challenge under the objective test is not raised, the defendant should be entitled to a pretrial hearing in which the government is required to show probable cause for its actions with regard to the defendant. These decisions should be for the court alone. If the defendant loses at these preliminary stages, he should then be allowed to raise the defense at trial under the subjective test. His burden should be as light as possible, and he should be required to show no more than government involvement in order to raise the issue. Once the defendant has raised the issue, then the burden should be on the prosecution to prove no entrapment beyond a reasonable doubt, and this should be the only issue submitted to the jury concerning entrapment. Hardy, supra, 3 Am.J.Crim.L. at 203. The real issue considers who created the environment for the criminal act within the totality of the circumstances. What I propose, as provided in Juillet, 475 N.W.2d 786, and the course of Florida cases starting with Cruz, 465 So.2d 516, is a re-examination of the totality of the circumstances. The goal is to apprehend the criminal, and even prevent criminal conduct, and not to be the principal through which its commission is arranged and pursued. This thesis is not only consistent with the most recent majority of the United States Supreme Court in Jacobson ___ U.S. ___, 112 S.Ct. 1535, but follows reliably from Sherman, 356 U.S. 369, 78 S.Ct. 819, and, in this state, Lafleur, 533 P.2d at 310. I find no office in the entrapment defense analysis for a separate consideration of outrageous governmental conduct. It is, as the majority essentially concluded in Jacobson, that outrageous conduct is an attendant function and factor in any attempted application of the subjective entrapment defense. One of the greatest state jurists of this century, Justice Stanley Mosk of the California Supreme Court, addressed this subject in the detailed case of People v. Barraza, 23 Cal.3d 675, 153 Cal.Rptr. 459, 591 P.2d 947 (1979). In his broad analysis of the current status of the law he recognized: Such support for the [objective test] no doubt derives from a developing awareness that entrapment is a facet of a broader problem. Along with illegal search and seizures, wiretapping, false arrest, illegal detention and the third degree, it is a type of lawless law enforcement. They all spring from common motivations. Each is a substitute for skillful and scientific investigation. Each is condoned by the sinister sophism that the end, when dealing with known criminals or the `criminal classes,' justifies the employment of illegal means. (Donnelly, Judicial Control of Informants, Spies, Stool Pigeons, and Agent Provocateurs (1951) 60 Yale L.J. 1091, 1111.) Barraza, 153 Cal.Rptr. at 467, 591 P.2d at 955. Following a review of the complete literature found in the United States Supreme Court cases of Sorrells, 287 U.S. 435, 53 S.Ct. 210; Sherman, 356 U.S. 369, 78 S.Ct. 819; and Russell, 411 U.S. 423, 93 S.Ct. 1637, and the historical California law, Justice Mosk concluded, with the weight of reason provided by Chief Justice Warren in Sherman, 356 U.S. at 372, 78 S.Ct. at 820-21, the function of law enforcement manifestly `does not include the manufacturing of crime.' Barraza, 153 Cal.Rptr. at 466, 591 P.2d at 954. Justice Mosk additionally concluded: Commentators on the subject have overwhelmingly favored judicial decision of the issue by application of a test which looks only to the nature and extent of police activity in the criminal enterprise. (See, e.g., LaFave & Scott, Handbook on Criminal Law (1972) pp. 371-373; authorities cited in State v. Mullen (Iowa 1974) 216 N.W.2d 375, 381; authorities cited in Park, The Entrapment Controversy (1976) 60 Minn.L.Rev. 163, 167, fn. 13.) Professor Kamisar observed that only two law review articles in the past 25 years have favored the subjective test. (Kamisar et al., Modern Criminal Procedure (4th ed. 1978 Supp.) p. 119.) The Model Penal Code has adopted an objective test (Model Pen.Code (Proposed Official Draft 1962) § 2.13(1); see also Nat. Com. on Reform of Fed.Crim.Laws, Final Rep.Proposed New Fed.Crim.Code (1971) § 702(2))[.] Barraza, 153 Cal.Rptr. at 466-67, 591 P.2d at 954-55. The court held that the proper test for entrapment in California asked: [W]as the conduct of the law enforcement agent likely to induce a normally law-abiding person to commit the offense? For the purposes of this test, we presume that such a person would normally resist the temptation to commit a crime presented by the simple opportunity to act unlawfully. Official conduct that does no more than offer that opportunity to the suspectfor example, a decoy programis therefore permissible; but it is impermissible for the police or their agents to pressure the suspect by overbearing conduct such as badgering, cajoling, importuning, or other affirmative acts likely to induce a normally law-abiding person to commit the crime. Id. at 467, 591 P.2d at 955.