Opinion ID: 186577
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Jury Instructions and the Entrapment Defense

Text: 14 Orenuga claims that the District Court violated his Sixth Amendment right to trial by an impartial jury in rejecting his proposed voir dire question on the entrapment defense. According to Orenuga, the court was required to submit his proposed query to the venire, because its subject was central to the case. Br. of Appellant at 16. Orenuga's concern is that some prospective jurors might subscribe to the view that a defense of entrapment never should be allowed to negate criminal responsibility. 15 The Sixth Amendment right to jury trial `guarantees to the criminally accused a fair trial by a panel of impartial, indifferent jurors' . . . . United States v. Edmond, 52 F.3d 1080, 1094 (D.C.Cir.1995) (per curiam) (quoting Irvin v. Dowd, 366 U.S. 717, 722, 81 S.Ct. 1639, 6 L.Ed.2d 751 (1961)). This guarantee includes the right to be tried by jurors who are capable of putting aside their personal impressions and opinions and rendering a verdict based solely on the evidence presented in court. See id. Voir dire is a vehicle for ensuring this right, see Rosales-Lopez v. United States, 451 U.S. 182, 188, 101 S.Ct. 1629, 68 L.Ed.2d 22 (1981), as it serves to screen out jurors whose personal views make them incapable of performing this function. See Edmond, 52 F.3d at 1094. 16 In conducting voir dire under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 24(a), the trial judge `is accorded broad discretion to mold the manner and mode of [the] examination,' and there is `no basis for reversal unless he abuses his discretion, and there is substantial prejudice to the accused.' Id. at 1095 (quoting United States v. Liddy, 509 F.2d 428, 435 (D.C.Cir.1974)). Specific subjects for voir dire questioning are constitutionally compelled when the trial court's failure to ask [a] question[ ] . . . render[s] the defendant's trial fundamentally unfair, but not where the subjects proposed for questioning may be merely helpful. Mu'Min v. Virginia, 500 U.S. 415, 425-26, 111 S.Ct. 1899, 114 L.Ed.2d 493 (1991). The defense always must be given a full and fair opportunity to expose bias or prejudice on the part of the veniremen, United States v. Robinson, 475 F.2d 376, 380-81 (D.C.Cir.1973), and `the restriction upon inquiries at the request of counsel, [is] subject to the essential demands of fairness,' Morgan v. Illinois, 504 U.S. 719, 730, 112 S.Ct. 2222, 119 L.Ed.2d 492 (1992) (quoting Aldridge v. United States, 283 U.S. 308, 310, 51 S.Ct. 470, 75 L.Ed. 1054 (1931)). 17 Orenuga submits that substantial unfairness occurs when a trial judge declines to present a party's question during voir dire that touches on a matter clearly central to the case. See Recording of Oral Argument at 10:10. This argument overreaches and finds no concrete basis in the law. In United States v. Robinson, the court established that [t]he possibility of prejudice is real, and there is consequent need for a searching voir dire examination, in situations where, for example, the case carries racial overtones, or involves other matters concerning which either the local community or the population at large is commonly known to harbor strong feelings that may stop short of presumptive bias in law yet significantly skew deliberations in fact. 475 F.2d at 381 (footnotes omitted). The court also noted that voir dire must be allowed on subjects with respect to which bias and distorting influence have become evident, through experience with juries, and have come to be recognized as a proper subject for the voir dire.  Id. The potential for jurors to attach undue weight to the testimony of law enforcement officials during trial is one such example. See id. (citing Brown v. United States, 338 F.2d 543 (D.C.Cir.1964)). 18 We have found no case, and the defense cites to none, in which this circuit or any other circuit has recognized a commonly known bias against the entrapment defense, which leaves us with no indication that it is within the recognized classes of inflammatory topics that would meet the Robinson test. Indeed, the only two circuits to confront this question directly, the Eighth and Tenth Circuits, have both held that it is not an abuse of discretion for a trial court to reject a question regarding prospective jurors' attitudes toward the defense of entrapment. See United States v. Dion, 762 F.2d 674, 694 (8th Cir.1985), rev'd on other grounds, 476 U.S. 734, 106 S.Ct. 2216, 90 L.Ed.2d 767 (1986); United States v. Crawford, 444 F.2d 1404, 1405 (10th Cir.1971) (per curiam). 19 Where, as here, the proposed question does not concern a subject well known to inflame the passions of the community, the party seeking the inquiry bears the burden of showing that the question is reasonably calculated to discover an actual and likely source of prejudice, rather than pursue a speculative will-o-the-wisp. Robinson, 475 F.2d at 381; see United States v. Payne, 944 F.2d 1458, 1474 (9th Cir.1991). Orenuga failed to establish the requisite foundation to support his novel claim that potential jurors might possess strong feelings about the entrapment defense that would bias their decisions, nor did he demonstrate how his question was designed to uncover any such bias. Indeed, Orenuga concedes that entrapment has a low [ ] public profile, Br. of Appellant at 15, and asserts that there is merely a sense in the community at large that people no inclined to do wrong, don't do wrong even . . . under influence, Recording of Oral Argument at 6:05-:15. These statements alone are not sufficient in this circuit to find that a question is constitutionally compelled. See United States v. Cockerham, 476 F.2d 542, 544 n. 2 (D.C.Cir.1973) (per curiam) (noting that when general bias is evident from case law and academic literature, and the examination of jurors is otherwise brief and limited in scope, or elicits an indication of possible bias against the defense, a voir dire question on the subject is appropriate). 20 Therefore, in the absence of evidence that prejudice against the entrapment defense was likely to be encountered in the community from which the jurors were selected, the District Court did not abuse its discretion in refusing to ask specific questions on this subject. We have no occasion to decide whether it would have been an abuse of discretion for the District Court to permit a question on entrapment.