Opinion ID: 1986216
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: united states v. russell

Text: The next major decision from the United States Supreme Court came in 1973. In Russell, supra, an undercover officer investigating the defendant for illegally manufacturing the drug methamphetamine supplied the defendant with an essential ingredient for producing the drug. The necessary ingredient, although difficult to obtain, was itself harmless and legal. Using the ingredient supplied by the officer, the defendant manufactured and sold methamphetamine. A jury rejected the defendant's entrapment defense, but the Ninth Circuit reversed on due process grounds after finding an intolerable degree of governmental participation in the criminal enterprise. Id. at 427, 93 S.Ct. 1637. The Supreme Court reversed, concluding that the police officer's act of providing the harmless ingredient to gain the defendant's confidence was not a due process violation but rather a permissible means of investigation. Id. at 432, 93 S.Ct. 1637. Responding to the defendant's contention that the Court should apply an exclusionary rule to bar police involvement in criminal activity, the Court explained that the government's conduct violated no independent constitutional right of the defendant. [8] Id. at 430, 93 S.Ct. 1637. Although the Court rejected the defendant's due process argument, it did not foreclose the possibility that such a defense might exist on different facts: While we 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, cf. Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 72 S.Ct. 205, 96 L.Ed. 183 (1952), the instant case is distinctly not of that breed. [ Russell, supra at 431-432, 93 S.Ct. 1637.] [9] The Court also rejected the defendant's contention that the nonconstitutional defense of entrapment should be broadened to mandate dismissal in all cases involving overzealous law enforcement. Id. at 428, 432-433, 93 S.Ct. 1637. After reaffirming the longstanding rule of Sorrells and Sherman, the Court explained that the entrapment defense was not intended to give the federal judiciary a `chancellor's foot' veto over law enforcement practices of which it did not approve. [10] Russell, supra at 435, 93 S.Ct. 1637. A contrary rule would improperly interfere with the authority of the executive branch to execute the federal laws. Justice Douglas, joined by Justice Brennan, dissented. He opined that the defendant had been entrapped because the police officer was an active participant in the unlawful activity. Id. at 437, 93 S.Ct. 1637. Without respect to the objective question whether the police conduct likely would have caused an otherwise innocent person to commit a crime, Justice Douglas reasoned that courts should not tolerate the conduct of officers who become the instigators of the crime, or partners in its commission, or the creative brain behind the illegal scheme. Id. at 439, 93 S.Ct. 1637. Justice Stewart, joined by Justices Brennan and Marshall, dissented separately. He advocated the objective view of entrapment espoused by Justices Roberts and Frankfurter in Sorrells and Sherman. Regarding congressional intent purportedly underlying the majority rule of Sorrells, Justice Stewart opined: I find it impossible to believe that the purpose of the defense is to effectuate some unexpressed congressional intent to exclude from its criminal statutes persons who committed a prohibited act, but would not have done so except for the Government's inducements. Russell, supra, at 441-442, 93 S.Ct. 1637. Justice Stewart questioned how an entrapped defendant, who has by definition committed the charged offense, could be accurately described as otherwise innocent. He also wondered why a defendant induced, provoked, or tempted to commit an offense by the government would be any more innocent or any less predisposed than he would be if he had been induced, provoked, or tempted by a private personwhich, of course, would not entitle him to cry `entrapment.' Id. at 442, 93 S.Ct. 1637. Given this logical conundrum, Justice Stewart reasoned that the purpose of the entrapment defense must not be to protect otherwise innocent persons, but rather to prohibit unlawful governmental activity in instigating crime. Id. He then suggested that the subjective view's focus on innocence or predisposition unjustly caused the defendant's past criminal record to determine whether police conduct directed toward the defendant is permissible. Id. at 443-444, 93 S.Ct. 1637. On the basis of these practical concerns, Justice Stewart endorsed an objective test for entrapment similar to that proposed by Justice Frankfurter in Sherman: [G]overnment agents may engage in conduct that is likely, when objectively considered, to afford a person ready and willing to commit the crime an opportunity to do so. But when the agents' involvement in criminal activities goes beyond the mere offering of such an opportunity and when their conduct is of a kind that could induce or instigate the commission of a crime by one not ready and willing to commit it, thenregardless of the character or propensities of the particular person inducedI think entrapment has occurred. For in that situation, the Government has engaged in the impermissible manufacturing of crime, and the federal courts should bar the prosecution in order to preserve the institutional integrity of the system of federal criminal justice. [ Russell, supra at 445, 93 S.Ct. 1637 (citations omitted).]