Opinion ID: 2156106
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Refusal to Instruct Jury on Entrapment

Text: Verrecchia also argues that the trial justice erred by refusing to instruct the jury on the affirmative defense of entrapment. A defendant is entitled to a jury instruction on this defense if he or she has established that (1) the government induced the crime, and that (2) he or she lacked the predisposition to engage in the criminal conduct. See State v. Jones, 416 A.2d 676, 679 (R.I.1980); see also Mathews v. United States, 485 U.S. 58, 63, 108 S.Ct. 883, 886, 99 L.Ed.2d 54, 61 (1988). The defendant has the burden of producing some evidence on both elements that would be sufficient to raise a reasonable doubt as to whether he `was an unwary innocent rather than an unwary criminal.' United States v. Hernandez, 995 F.2d 307, 313 (1st Cir. 1993) (quoting Mathews, 485 U.S. at 63, 108 S.Ct. at 886, 99 L.Ed.2d at 61); see also Jones, 416 A.2d at 679. A court assessing the sufficiency of the defendant's presentation on this score (that is, whether some evidence has been adduced) must be able to find more than a scintilla of support to justify such an instruction. Rather, the court must be able to conclude that some evidence indicated that the government went beyond merely soliciting the defendant to participate in a criminal opportunity. Indeed, such evidence must be capable of supporting a determination that the police, by their actions, turned defendant from a righteous path to an iniquitous one. United States v. Coady, 809 F.2d 119, 122 (1st Cir.1987); see also Jones, 416 A.2d at 679. Thus, courts have found sufficient evidence of entrapment when the government's inducement included threats, forceful solicitation and dogged insistence, playing upon sympathies or the past relationship of a war buddy, and repeated suggestions at a time when defendant had lost his job and needed money. United States v. Joost, 92 F.3d 7, 12 (1st Cir. 1996). In sum, only after the defendant has satisfied the burden of showing some evidence that a government agent corrupted him in this manner will the burden of disproving entrapment shift to the government. See United States v. Pratt, 913 F.2d 982, 988-89 (1st Cir. 1990); see also Jones, 416 A.2d at 679. Verrecchia suggests that both Rossi's testimony and that of the undercover police detective who purchased weapons from him provided sufficient proof that the state entrapped him. The undercover police detective testified that, after learning of Verrecchia's role as the keeper of GNG's weapons, he asked Rossi (then a government informant) to arrange for Verrecchia to sell some of GNG's weapons to an undercover police detective. Rossi testified that in a series of conversations with Verrecchia, he instructed him to sell some of the group's weapons to a fellow inmate, called The Ghost, who would soon be released on bail. According to Rossi, Verrecchia readily agreed to do so. Thereafter, the detective testified, he contacted Verrecchia and identified himself as The Ghost. The police recorded this conversation on tape. The detective recalled that Verrecchia said he had been expecting his call. He recounted that Verrecchia readily agreed to meet with him to discuss the proposed weapons sale. When they met, Verrecchia asked the detective to be more specific concerning the weapons he wished to buy because Verrecchia claimed to have a coffin full of weapons to choose from. Later that day they met again, but after Verrecchia delivered the weapons to the detective, the police immediately arrested him. Verrecchia avers that this testimony  combined with evidence indicating that he had no criminal record or documented history of possessing weapons or dealing in them  satisfied his burden of showing some evidence that the state induced him to commit a crime for which he had no predisposition. We disagree. In this case, the state did no more than merely offer Verrecchia the opportunity to commit a crime. No evidence suggested that the police had argued or pleaded with Verrecchia or had acted with such zeal in pursuing a conviction that [their] efforts result[ed] in the commission of a crime that likely would not have occurred if the suspect had been left to his own devices. Joost, 92 F.3d at 12 (citing Jacobson v. United States, 503 U.S. 540, 553-54, 112 S.Ct. 1535, 1543, 118 L.Ed.2d 174, 187 (1992)). Moreover, [a] `sting' operation is not improper inducement if it merely provides an opportunity to commit a crime, but proof of opportunity plus `something else' may be adequate to meet a defendant's burden. Id. Here, Verrecchia offered no proof of any heavy-handed inducements by the government that would have elevated the state's mere invitation for Verrecchia to commit a crime into something else. Id. In fact, the record indicates that he already possessed the stolen property before the police devised the sting operation. Thus, apart from its role in revealing a preexisting disposition to commit the challenged crimes, the government had nothing whatsoever to do with Verrecchia's possession of the stolen weapons. Because Verrecchia failed to prove the type of overbearing inducement needed to satisfy the first prong of the Mathews test, any consideration of his predisposition would be virtually academic. Pratt, 913 F.2d at 990 (quoting United States v. Polito, 856 F.2d 414, 417 n.3 (1st Cir. 1988)). Nevertheless, even assuming that Verrecchia had shown improper inducement to sell stolen property,the evidence clearly established that he was predisposed to possess stolen property. [13] When the police arrested Verrecchia he was wearing a stolen leather jacket and he was carrying a bag full of stolen jewelry in the vehicle he was driving. Thus, it is at best unconvincing for Verrecchia to argue that he lacked any predisposition to possess stolen property before the government induced him to do so. In fact, Rossi's testimony indicated that, long before the sting operation, Verrecchia had kept a large cache of weapons for GNG, all of which the police eventually determined had been stolen. Moreover, even Verrecchia's statements to the undercover police detective strongly suggested that he had possessed the stolen weapons long before the sting operation ever began. [14] Therefore, because Verrecchia failed to satisfy his burden of showing that he lacked any predisposition to possess stolen property and of producing some evidence that the government used overwhelming tactics to lure him away from his law-abiding ways into crime, we hold that the trial justice did not err by refusing to instruct the jury on the affirmative defense of entrapment.