Court Opinion

ID: 9446532
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:57:35.82587+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:41.404526
License: Public Domain

CAMERON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Borrowing a phrase from the first sentence of appellee’s argument, we repeat what we believe is a universally accepted fact, that the traffic in narcotics is “dirty business”. The terrible toll being taken of the lives and well-being of the citizens of this country, particularly of its youth, was well expressed in a recent message by the Governor of New York to the Legislature of that State:1
“Among the many consequences of the tension and unrest of the postwar world none is more intrinsically terrible than the steady rise of drug addiction among the youth of our nation. * * * And yet in spite of these efforts the drug traffic has continued to spread, the number of addicts has continued to grow. Narcotic arrests in New York City alone have risen six hundred percent in the past decade; arrests of persons under twenty-one have increased 2,-300 percent * * *.”
State legislatures have responded to the tragic situation, as has Congress, by tightening the laws against those who engage in this nefarious business. But the courts are, in many instances, going in the other direction as, in my opinion, the majority here, and the courts in the cited cases, have been and are going.2 That attitude it has seemed to me, is born in many instances of a condemnation of the methods employed by the government in apprehending those engaged in handling narcotics and presenting their cases to the courts. My own disposition is rather to applaud the courage demonstrated by government agents who are willing to risk their lives by getting down into the mire where alone participants in the narcotic business can be found.
The defense here is solely that appellant was entrapped. The Judge heard all of the testimony and saw the witnesses who gave it and, in my opinion, there was ample evidence to support his finding against the defense of entrapment. We who do not occupy his vantage point are here repudiating his findings, intimating that we will not accept such a finding if the government does not place the informer upon the stand.
I am unable to give my assent to such a view. I think the cases show that it is almost impossible to convict narcotic dealers without the help of informers who, in most instances, are the unfortunate victims of the dirty business with which we are dealing. Anyone willing to recognize realities can see a number of reasons why the government should not be forced to place the informer upon the stand if it can make its case without doing so. In my opinion, the evidence before the court below was sufficient without the use of the informer, and the court below was justified in holding that the defense of entrapment had not been established.
So believing, I am constrained to set down thus briefly the grounds of my dissent. It is not possible to read this record without feeling a strong sympathy for appellant. A share of that sympathy should, in my opinion, be reserved for the hapless victims referred to by the Governor of New York.

. See dissenting opinion in Shurman v. United States, 5 Cir., 233 F.2d 272, 280, footnote 6.

. And cf. Indiviglio v. United States, 1958, 357 U.S. 574, 78 S.Ct. 1381, 2 L. Ed.2d 1547, reversing our decision reported in 249 F.2d 549; and Giordonello v. United States, 1958, 357 U.S. 480, 78 S.Ct. 1245, 2 L.Ed.2d 1503, reversing our decision reported in 241 F.2d 575; and see Gilmore v. United States, 5 Cir., 1958, 256 F.2d 565.