Opinion ID: 584057
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: The gun

Text: 43 Mosley's final argument about coercion is that Arter induced him to carry a gun during the commission of the drug offense for the purpose of enhancing his sentence pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 924(c). Mosley contends that he felt the need to carry a gun during the drug transaction, for reasons of safety and/or respectability, after he patted Arter down during an earlier meeting and found that Arter was carrying a gun. The choice to carry the gun was entirely Mosley's, and there was nothing improperly coercive about Arter's conduct in this regard. 44 In summary, the government has displayed excessive zeal in investigating Mosley's illegal drug activities. We do not condone such conduct and the government would do well to remember the admonition of Justice Brandeis in his dissent in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 48 S.Ct. 564, 72 L.Ed. 944 (1928), majority opinion overruled on other grounds by Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 353, 88 S.Ct. 507, 512, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967): 45 Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the end justifies the means ... would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this Court should resolutely set its face. 46 Id. 277 U.S. at 485, 48 S.Ct. at 575. However, notwithstanding our disapproval of the government's conduct here, the defense of outrageous conduct is narrow and we must hold that the government's conduct in its investigation of Mosley was not so outrageous as to bar prosecution.