Opinion ID: 194929
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: applying the doctrine

Text: Having traced the evolution of the doctrine of outrageous misconduct, we proceed to consider its applicability in this case. Although what transpired here fits neither of the conventional patterns of outrageous misconduct described above, the district court nonetheless ruled that furnishing the hefty heroin sample (and then losing track of it) comes within the doctrine's sweep. We conclude, for two independently sufficient reasons, that the district court erred.
It is clear that the government may supply drugs to a suspect in a drug investigation. Hampton, 425 U.S. at 491 (Powell, J., concurring). When this occurs in the prototypical case, an agent documents a malefactor's acceptance of a government-supplied sample and then promptly arrests him. In this scenario, even a large quantity of government-supplied drugs will not raise judicial eyebrows, for the contraband is regained coincident with the arrest. See, e.g., Barnett, 989 F.2d at 560 (declining to find outrageous misconduct where agent sold suspect enough hydriodic acid to manufacture 18 kilos of methamphetamine 9 but recovered it promptly); United States v. Gianni, 678 F.2d 956, 960 (11th Cir.) (similar; agents sold suspect 1150 lbs. of marijuana but recovered it promptly), cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1071 (1982); United States v. Dunn, 608 F. Supp. 530, 531 (W.D.N.Y. 1985) (similar; agent sold suspect one kilo of cocaine but recovered it promptly). The government's role in supplying drugs is more problematic when the drugs are not recovered. Nonetheless, several courts have held that providing a known addict small quantities of drugs in order to facilitate the progress of an undercover agent's work does not constitute outrageous misconduct. See United States v. Harris, F.2d , (10th Cir. 1993) [No. 92-4001, 1993 WL 232155 at -]; United States v. Barrera-Moreno, 951 F.2d 1089, 1092 (9th Cir. 1991), cert. denied, 113 S. Ct. 417 (1992) & 113 S. Ct. 985 (1993); United States v. Ford, 918 F.2d 1343, 1349-50 (8th Cir. 1990). Common sense suggests that, where the target of the investigation is a distributor rather than an addict, the quantity of drugs needed to earn or retain the suspect's confidence will likely be larger.7 It is, therefore, unsurprising that courts generally have declined to find outrageous misconduct in situations of this sort despite the 7We recognize that narcotics differ in many ways, including size, weight, and potency; and that, therefore, a small amount of a particular drug, say, heroin, may be much more lethal than a larger amount of a different drug, say, marijuana. For ease in reference, however, we use the term quantity throughout this opinion as a proxy for dangerousness. 10 disappearance of fairly substantial quantities of government supplied contraband. See, e.g., United States v. Valona, 834 F.2d 1334, 1344-45 (7th Cir. 1987) (declining to find misconduct where the government disbursed, without recovering, a 3.5-gram sample of cocaine while negotiating sales aggregating up to 35 kilos); United States v. Buishas, 791 F.2d 1310, 1314 (7th Cir. 1986) (similar; government disbursed, without recovering, a 69gram sample of marijuana in the course of closing an 89-kilo deal). Although Valona and Buishas are structurally analogous to the case at hand, the government concedes that the quantity of drugs given to Fuentes is, in absolute terms, unprecedented. The question, then, is whether, at some point, the quantity of drugs disbursed on the government's behalf may become so large that, given all the attendant circumstances, the government's role becomes qualitatively different, i.e., outrageous. The court below devised a seven-part test and, applying that test, determined the government's actions to be outrageous. See Santana, 808 F. Supp. at 81-86. The court focused on (1) the type of drug furnished; (2) the sample's potency or purity; (3) its relative size; (4) whether the defendant requested it; (5) whether the drugs were recovered; (6) what likely happened to them; and (7) whether the sample itself constitutes the corpus delicti of the crime charged in the indictment.8 Id. at 81-82. 8In contrast, the relevant DEA guidelines, see supra note 1, suggest consideration of (1) the type and amount of the drug contained in the sample; (2) the likelihood that the sample will 11 We appreciate the district court's effort to structure the exercise of judicial discretion, and we realize that the court did not intend its compendium to be exhaustive. See id. at 82. Nevertheless, we do not think that the inquiry into outrageousness can usefully be broken down into a series of discrete components. Almost by definition, the power of a court to control prosecutorial excesses through resort to substantive aspects of the due process clause is called into play only in idiosyncratic situations and such situations are likely to be highly ramified. Where facts are critically important and fact patterns tend to be infinitely diverse, adjudication can often best proceed on a case-by-case basis. The outrageousness defense falls into this category. Thus, it is unproductive to force the determination of outrageousness into a mechanical mode. Let us be perfectly plain. We find that outrageousness, by its nature, requires an ad hoc determination. We do not suggest, however, that the assessment should be wholly unguided. The calculus must be rooted in the record, and it will often be informed by the various factors enumerated in the district court's test, the DEA's test, see supra note 8, and reach consumers; (3) the number and prominence of the suspects implicated; (4) the type and amount of evidence needed to complete the ongoing investigation; (5) the time required to do so; and (6) the likelihood of obtaining such evidence. Although the DEA's list, like the district court's list, contains factors relevant to the seriousness of harm likely to be suffered by end users, the DEA's list emphasizes, and the court's list slights, the likelihood that the investigation will lead to the prosecution of important drug dealers. 12 similar tests produced by other sources.9 At bottom, however, outrageousness is a concept, not a constant. What shocks the conscience in a given situation may be acceptable, though perhaps grim or unpleasant, under a different set of circumstances. Slashing a person's throat with a sharp knife may be an unrelievedly outrageous course of conduct if one thinks in terms of Jack the Ripper, helpless women, and the shadowy streets of London; the same behavior will be thoroughly acceptable, however, if the knife is a scalpel, the knife-wielder a skilled surgeon performing a tracheotomy, the target a patient, and the venue an operating room. Although we recognize that formulaic tests offer administrative convenience and ease in application, we also recognize that neither life nor law can always be made convenient and easy. So here: there is simply no way to reduce the myriad combinations of potentially relevant circumstances to a neat list of weighted factors without losing too much in the translation. Cf. Borden v. Paul Revere Life Ins. Co., 935 F.2d 370, 380 (1st Cir. 1991) (discussing outrageousness in the context of tort liability and concluding that [t]here is no universal litmus 9See, e.g., United States v. Feinman, 930 F.2d 495, 498 (6th Cir. 1991) (suggesting that a reviewing tribunal weigh (1) the importance of the investigation, evidenced by the type of criminal activity targeted, (2) whether the criminal enterprise predated the investigation, (3) whether the investigator directed or controlled the criminal activity, and (4) the investigation's impact on the commission of the crime); United States v. Gardner, 658 F. Supp. 1573, 1576-77 (W.D. Pa. 1987) (suggesting that a reviewing tribunal weigh (1) the government's role in creating the crime, (2) the illegality or immorality of the police conduct, (3) the defendant's predisposition to commit the crime, and (4) whether the investigation is aimed at preventing further criminality). 13 test that a court can utilize to determine whether behavior is extreme and outrageous). In addition to relying on a tightly structured formulation in an area of the law demanding flexibility, the district court compounded its error by omitting from that formulation a salient set of considerations: it disregarded the nature and scope of the ongoing investigation. The outrageousness vel non of a police officer's actions can only be evaluated by taking into account the totality of the relevant circumstances. When the officer is on the trail of a criminal enterprise, these circumstances include the identity of the suspects, the gravity of past crimes, and the dangers foreseeably attributable to the enterprise's uninterrupted progress (including likely future crimes). In this instance, the government had a solid basis to believe that Santana's network could distribute up to 200 kilograms of heroin per month. Seen in that light, it does not shock our collective conscience to think that a lawman would dangle 13.3 grams of heroin as bait to land such a large-scale ring, even though delivery of the sample ran a palpable risk of ushering it into the marketplace. The district judge refused to honor this argument, which the magistrate described as setting a big hook to catch a big fish, for several reasons. We find none of them convincing. First, the judge worried that the big hook/big fish approach would remove any outer limit on the quantity of drugs that the government can introduce to society. Santana, 808 F. Supp. at 14 83. It is a sufficient answer to this concern that, here, the size of the sample was proportionate both to the perceived threat posed by the ongoing criminal activity and to the exigencies of the chase. Other cases, involving greater quantities of drugs or materially different circumstances, need not be decided unless and until they arise. Second, the judge concluded that the government's conduct served only to increase the aggregate sum of heroin available for consumption. Id. at 84. This statement, which we read as a bid to repudiate the magistrate's implicit assessment of costs and benefits, is highly questionable. Let us compare two worlds. In the first world, the government distributes 13.3 grams of heroin, but Santana's network is put out of business. In the second world, the government exercises greater restraint in its undercover activities, but fails to gather enough evidence to immobilize the ring. The aggregate supply of heroin will be greater in the first world only if one is prepared to indulge the unlikely assumption that some other equally skilled criminal network will instantaneously pick up the slack. Third, the judge, without saying so in haec verba, seemingly suggests that some situations cannot be analyzed in terms of societal costs and benefits. See id. at 85; cf. Richard C. Donnelly, Judicial Control of Informants, Spies, Stool Pigeons, and Agents Provocateurs, 60 Yale L.J. 1091, 1111 (1951) (denouncing the sinister sophism that the end, when dealing with known criminals or the 'criminal classes,' justifies the 15 employment of illegal means). We do not share the district court's discomfiture with means/ends rationality or what amounts to the same thing cost/benefit analysis. At least when the decisionmaker uses a common currency of exchange and operates under conditions of reasonable certainty, cost/benefit analysis is a perfectly legitimate mode of legal reasoning, frequently employed by both courts and agencies. See generally Richard A. Posner, The Problems of Jurisprudence 105-08 (1990). Using such an approach here does not strike us as either theoretically unsound or fundamentally unfair. More important still, we can identify no constitutional impediment to the government weighing the risk of an immediate 13.3-gram increase in the heroin supply against the potential benefit of diverting vast quantities of heroin from the American market. The district court's resistance to cost/benefit analysis is carried to its logical conclusion by appellee Fuentes. He maintains that no possible prosecutorial objective can justify the distribution of so much heroin by the government. But, since there is abundant precedent for distribution of drugs by law enforcement agents mounting stings and other undercover operations, see cases cited supra pp. 9-10, the only course of action compatible with Fuentes's argument would be to construct a per se rule, drawing a bright line at some particular quantity of drugs and forbidding lawmen to cross that line in dealing with suspected drug traffickers. We regard a per se rule in this 16 context as unprecedented, unworkable,10 unwise, and thoroughly uninviting. We, therefore, refuse to travel that road. Saying that we reject the district court's objections to the big hook/big fish metaphor is not tantamount to saying that we unreservedly embrace the comparison. A hook, regardless of its size, causes injury only to the fish that is caught. We think that a more useful metaphor is that it takes a wide net to catch a big fish. Of course, a net cast to catch a big fish (thought to be predatory) might also catch hundreds of relatively innocent little fish. But, if the big fish would have devoured millions of little fish, even the most tender-hearted marine biologist would be hard pressed to argue against the fisherman's use of the net. In the final analysis, probing the magistrate's metaphor for imprecisions does not assist appellees' cause, but, rather, reinforces our conviction that the intuition underlying the metaphor is sound. We have trolled enough in these waters. We conclude that, on the facts of this case, the district court erred in discounting the import of the criminal enterprise's scope and the magnitude of the threat that it posed. This error possesses decretory significance: once the size of the sample is measured in relative rather than absolute terms, the investigation 10We illustrate one of the many problems that such a per se rule would present. Were we to draw such a line at, say, 10 grams of heroin, we would be handing criminals a foolproof way to detect whether prospective new suppliers were actually government agents: simply demand a sample equal to 11 or 12 grams of heroin. 17 reviewed here is no longer unprecedented and the conduct in question cannot plausibly be classified as outrageous.11
Generally speaking, an outrageous misconduct defense can prosper only if a defendant's due process rights have been violated. The defense is normally not available in situations where the government has injured only third parties or committed a victimless gaffe. We would be compelled to reverse the ruling below on this basis even if the government's deportment failed the test of outrageousness. In an early entrapment case, Justice Brandeis wrote: The prosecution should be stopped, not because some right of th[e] defendant's] has been denied, but in order to protect the Government. To preserve it from illegal conduct of its officers. To protect the purity of its courts. Casey v. United States, 276 U.S. 413, 425 (Brandeis, J., dissenting). The obvious implication of this perspective with its emphasis on the rule of law rather than on individual rights is that the state ought not profit by its miscreancy, regardless of whether a charged defendant has been wronged. Although the doctrinal view of entrapment based on this philosophy never prevailed, see Russell, 411 U.S. at 428-36, the Second Circuit subsequently flirted with the same perspective in a different context. In an outrageous 11We do not totally reject the possibility, suggested by the court below, that outrageous misconduct may be found apart from situations in which the government has used brutality or induced commission of a crime. We simply note that the case at hand does not require us to explore this doctrinal frontier. 18 misconduct case decided on other grounds, Judge Friendly expressed tentative support, in the abstract, for the view that the government ought not reap prosecutorial success growing out of the seeds of misconduct injuring third parties. See United States v. Archer, 486 F.2d 670, 676-77 (2d Cir. 1973).12 The court below believed this principle to be applicable here. See Santana, 808 F. Supp. at 84-85. We do not agree. In our estimation, the Archer dictum is incompatible with later pronouncements of the Supreme Court. The flagship case is United States v. Payner, 447 U.S. 727 (1979). There, the government obtained evidence against a defendant by rifling a third party's briefcase. Although no due process claim was presented on appeal, the Court seized the occasion to address the precise question of misconduct injuring third parties and adopted a distinction first endorsed by the Hampton plurality: [E]ven if we assume that the unlawful briefcase search was so outrageous as to offend fundamental `canons of decency and fairness,' Rochin v. California, 342 U.S. 165, 169 (1952) . . . the fact remains that [t]he limitations of the Due Process Clause . . . come into play only when the Government 12Two recent Second Circuit cases cite Archer in connection with the proposition that courts will closely examine those cases in which the Government misconduct injures third parties in some way. United States v. Thoma, 726 F.2d 1191, 1199 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 467 U.S. 1228 (1984); accord United States v. Chin, 934 F.2d 393, 400 (2d Cir. 1991). But neither panel actually applied this principle, because no injury to third parties had been established. By like token, in United States v. Panet-Collazo, 960 F.2d 256 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 113 S. Ct. 220 (1992), we were able to sidestep the issue because the heroin sample provided by the government as part of the sting was not used in a manner outrageously injurious to third parties. See id. at 260. 19 activity in question violates some protected right of the defendant. Hampton v. United States, supra, at 490 (plurality opinion). Payner, 447 U.S. at 737 n.9 (1979). This statement, to be sure, is dictum but it bears the earmarks of deliberative thought purposefully expressed. The statement is clear, pointed, and subscribed to by a 6-3 majority of the Justices. It is also prominent in its placement, appearing, as it does, in the concluding footnote of a major opinion. What is more, the issue that footnote 9 addressed had been thoroughly debated in the recent past, the Payner dissent treated it as purporting to establish a standing limitation, see id. at 749 n.15 (Marshall, J., dissenting), and the footnote's message has not been diluted by any subsequent pronouncement. Carefully considered statements of the Supreme Court, even if technically dictum, must be accorded great weight and should be treated as authoritative when, as in this instance, badges of reliability abound. See McCoy v. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology, 950 F.2d 13, 19 (1st Cir. 1991) (concluding that federal appellate courts are bound by the Supreme Court's considered dicta almost as firmly as by the Court's outright holdings, particularly when . . . a dictum is of recent vintage and not enfeebled by any subsequent statement) (collecting cases to like effect from other circuits), cert. denied, 112 S. Ct. 1939 (1992); see also Charles Alan Wright, The Law of the Federal Courts 58, at 374 (4th ed. 1983). We need not decide whether Payner established a 20 limitation on standing in the strict sense of the word, or merely signaled that defendants are highly unlikely to prevail when they seek to vindicate the rights of third parties. In either event, Payner makes manifest that, here, the trial court lacked authority under the due process clause to dismiss a charge on the basis that governmental misconduct caused conscience-shocking harm to non-defendants. See United States v. Valdovinos- Valdovinos, 743 F.2d 1436, 1437-38 (9th Cir. 1984) (per curiam) (rejecting an outrageous misconduct defense on the strength of footnote 9 in a case in which government agents, trying to trap professional middlemen, lured illegal immigrants to the U.S. only to deport them), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 114 (1985); United States v. Miceli, 774 F. Supp. 760, 770 (W.D.N.Y. 1991) (rejecting an outrageous misconduct defense on the strength of footnote 9 in a case in which a government investigator seduced the defendant's ex-wife in order to gather incriminating information about the defendant).