Opinion ID: 1992950
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: juillet

Text: I agree with Justice BRICKLEY that defendant Juillet was entrapped, even if one applies only the causation prong. I also agree generally with Justice BRICKLEY'S reasons for so concluding, except to the extent Justice BRICKLEY considers Juillet's individual characteristics. See ante, pp 65-69. The police informant's conduct toward Juillet posed a general objective likelihood of causing an average, hypothetical drug user to escalate his criminal activity to drug dealing, where such escalation would probably not otherwise have taken place. The police informant's conduct plainly violated the reprehensible-conduct prong of my analysis as well. This case presents an appalling illustration of a sting operation which spiralled completely out of control. The facts, as thoroughly stated by my Brother BRICKLEY, and as summarized by the Court of Appeals in People v Crawford, 143 Mich App 348, 354; 372 NW2d 550 (1985) (a case arising from the same Cheboygan County operation), reveal that the informant, Ronald Bleser, went far beyond simply infiltrating the local drug subculture to ensnare preexisting drug dealers. Rather, it appears that Bleser enthusiastically offered alcohol and illegal drugs to virtually every teenager and young adult he met in Cheboygan, and generated an entirely new center for the drug culture surrounding himself. [4] Allegations of improper conduct had been brought against Bleser in connection with earlier sting operations, which should have forewarned the police against employing him in the Cheboygan County operation. As Justice BRICKLEY notes, see ante, pp 47-48, the police undertook little or no meaningful supervision of Bleser's activities in Cheboygan County. Bleser was completely free to randomly select the targets for the sting. The lessons of this case are clear. The police either must dispense with using unstable and disreputable individuals like Bleser as undercover informants, or they must subject such informants to far closer and more effective supervision and control. The people of this state deserve, and the law demands, no less. Jamieson also raised an issue regarding an informant who was given random, unsupervised authority to select the targets of the sting operation, a factor, I stated, that would weigh in favor of a finding of entrapment under our objective test. 436 Mich 97. I reluctantly concluded in Jamieson that the unsupervised activity of the informant does not present dangers that make the police action at issue here `reprehensible,' but only because [t]he actions of the informant ... occurred in a jail setting where the police have the ability to closely monitor the situation to guard against dangers as they develop. Id. [5] I noted in Jamieson that [a] plan to have undercover police agents pose as drug dealers and offer to sell drugs to individuals randomly chosen on the street would raise a much more serious entrapment problem, and I expressed concern about a hypothetical government undercover investigation designed to `test the virtue' of its citizens, absent a reasonable suspicion of ongoing criminality in the local area.... Id. at 96, n 1. Even assuming that the police in this case had adequate grounds to believe that an ongoing drug subculture existed in Cheboygan County, the outrageous, immoral, and apparently criminal conduct of Bleser, and the lack of meaningful supervision, place this operation well outside the permissible bounds.