Court Opinion

ID: 9463373
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 23:04:33.790401+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:03.554550
License: Public Domain

HUFSTEDLER, Circuit Judge
(concurring and dissenting):
I concur in Part II of the majority opinion holding that United States v. Demma (9th Cir. en banc 1975) 523 ,F.2d 981 is retroactive, and reversing Robles’ conviction. I dissent from the remainder of the opinion.
The majority opinion places the activities of the Government and those of the informants in a more benign light than is warranted under all of the circumstances. As the Government knew all along, Murrieta and Borjorquez are both citizens and residents of Mexico. For about a year and a half before the Hart-Robles episode, DEA had used Murietta’s services as an informant. Agent Lugo had employed Murietta in 16 different investigations during the period, 10 of which (including that involving Hart and Robles) were conducted entirely within the United States. Murrieta owns a small store in Mexico. Borjorquez was a day laborer and field worker whose total annual earnings, aside from informing, were about $400. Neither informant was on a regular payroll. They were paid “rewards” for successful “investigations.” DEA paid them nothing if their activities did not produce an arrest. If an arrest resulted, DEA increased their compensation proportionately to the amount of contraband seized. For their services in the Hart-Robles matter, Murrieta was paid $950, and Borjorquez was paid $350. Murrieta was regularly receiving very substantial payments for his informing activities. Borjorquez knew that a successful foray into the United States could and did yield him almost as much money for a few days’ work as he could earn at hard labor in a year in Mexico. The Government gave the informants no training and virtually no supervision. The informants were simply unleashed to set up drug and narcotics transactions in this country. Murrieta picked his own investigatory targets. When he wanted to report his activities, he telephoned Agent Lugo. Agent Lugo never initiated calls; indeed, he did not know their home telephone numbers, if any, or their home addresses. He did learn the address of Murietta’s store during the Borjorquez interview. He also knew that the informants regularly retreated to Mexico after an arrest. Agent Lugo saw the informants from time to time, including an occasion when Murrieta appeared to testify in another trial in May 1974, after Hart and Robles had been arrested. At that time, the Government knew that Murrieta would be a mate*805rial witness in a later prosecution of Hart and Robles.
The Government’s use of these alien bounty hunters created grave dangers of abuse. These informants had neither knowledge of legal limitations upon the conduct of American law enforcement personnel nor any motivation to respect the rights of those whom they chose as targets. The reward system maximized the “temptations to produce as many accuseds as possible at the risk of trapping not merely an unwary criminal but sometimes an unwary innocent as well.” (Velarde-Villarreal v. United States (9th Cir. 1965) 354 F.2d 9,13). “[S]ince the Government chooses to utilize such agents, with the attendant risk of entrapment, it is fair to require the Government which uses this inherently dangerous procedure to take appropriate precautions to insure that no innocent man should be punished.” (Id.) We thereupon imposed on the Government the burden of proving that it used reasonable efforts to produce a Government informant whose presence has been appropriately requested by a defendant.
A.
The clearly erroneous standard of review does not apply to our determination of the question whether the district court correctly applied the reasonable efforts test to the undisputed facts, but, even if the standard were applicable, the district court’s decision should be reversed.
The district court did not make any factual findings, and there was no occasion for them. Assuming, as we do, that the court believed Agent Lugo’s testimony, no factual issues were presented for the court to resolve. Our court has held repeatedly that the clearly erroneous standard is irrelevant to a conclusion based on the application of a legal standard, even if that conclusion is labeled a finding of fact. “When a finding is essentially one dealing with the effect of certain transactions or events, rather than a finding which resolves disputed facts, an appellate court is not bound by the rule that findings shall not be set aside, unless clearly erroneous, but is free to draw its own conclusions.” (Fleischmann Distilling Corp. v. Maier Brewing Co. (9th Cir. 1963) 314 F.2d 149,152 n. 2, quoting with approval, Stevenot v. Norberg (9th Cir. 1954) 210 F.2d 615, 619. Accord: Lundgren v. Freeman (9th Cir. 1962) 307 F.2d 104, 115 (collecting numerous cases.).)1
To be sure, the reasonable efforts test is not a legal concept that is drained of all factual essences. Conduct cannot be deemed reasonable or unreasonable in a factual vacuum. Conduct that is reasonable under some circumstances is wholly unreasonable under others. Reasonableness rules have developed in many areas of the law in recognition that per se rules, are often unworkable, and, even if they are workable, they would tend to defeat the very purposes of the law that they were intended to implement, or they would produce results that would be generally perceived as unjust or downright foolish. For example, we would not attempt to justify a rule that a reasonable time to perform a contract is always ten days.
The existence of factual ingredients in the legal mix does not transmute the application of this legal standard into a factual question. Our obligation to inquire into the propriety of the district court’s application of the reasonable efforts test is akin to the inquiry that we constantly make into the sufficiency of evidence to sustain a finding or a judgment. After giving the trier of fact all of the intendments that are the trier’s due, we must confront the legal question of sufficiency of the evidence or reasonableness of the Government’s efforts without the novocaine of the clearly erroneous rule. It is no more possible to state a precise formula for measuring this kind of *806legal error than it is to produce an encompassing definition of what is reasonable under the circumstances. The components of the district court’s conclusion are a blend of factual determinations and decisions on issues of law. Even questions of the relevance of evidence combine facts with law. Consideration of steps that the Government could have but did not take is as relevant to the reasonableness decision as is consideration of the steps the Government did take. But the availability of alternatives hinges on questions of law as well as of fact, and questions of policy as well as interpretation of precedents.
The majority’s view that the Government carried its burden of proving that it used reasonable efforts to produce these informants reduces that burden to feather lightness. “Reasonable efforts” in this case is diminished to “try a little.” That result cannot be squared with the concerns that engendered the rule. The rule was created to minimize the risk of entrapment that “this inherently dangerous procedure” produces and to minimize the risk that unbridled governmental zeal will trench upon a defendant’s constitutionally guaranteed right to a fair trial. The line between creating opportunities for criminally disposed persons to follow their bent and entrapping the unwary innocent is not easily drawn. Neither is it simple to decide whether the Government has participated, by “suggestion, procurement, or negligence,” in the unavailability of a witness, which is a denial of due process (United States v. Mendez-Rodriguez (9th Cir. 1971) 450 F.2d 1, 5; United States v. Tsutagawa (9th Cir. 1974) 500 F.2d 420), and a failure to use reasonable efforts to produce a government informant whose departure was aided by his reward money, which only potentially leads to a dismissal of an indictment. I cannot countenance any lightening of the Government’s burden of proving reasonable efforts in terrain as ringed as this is with the dangers of entrapment and of due process deprivation. The Government failed to carry its reasonable efforts burden in these cases.
B.
I could not join the majority opinion even if I thought that the clearly erroneous standard was appropriate. As Judge Learned Hand observed: “It is idle to try to define the meaning of the phrase ‘clearly erroneous’; all that can be profitably said is that an appellate court, though it will hesitate less to reverse the finding of a judge than that of an administrative tribunal or of a jury, will nevertheless reverse it most reluctantly and only when well persuaded.” (United States v. Aluminum Co. (2d Cir. 1945) 148 F.2d 416, 433. See also 5A Moore’s Federal Practice (1975 ed.) If 52.-03[1], pp. 2613-2627.)
I am well persuaded that the evidence was insufficient to establish that the Government’s efforts were reasonable under the circumstances. The only efforts that the Government made to produce the informants were those of Agent Lugo. In several telephone conversations initiated by the informants, he asked them to appear, and one or both of them promised to do so. He also offered to drive them from Nogales to Tucson, if they would leave Mexico, travel to Nogales, and call him. They did not comply. He relied on their promises to appear made during his telephone conversations with them even after Murrieta broke his earlier promise to attend a scheduled pretrial interview. Although the Government knew that both were potential material witnesses and that Murrieta was a key witness, it paid them in full for the Hart-Robles set-up and continued to employ them for other investigations. Although Murrieta and Borjorquez were cooperative in the bounty hunting phase of their activities, the Government knew that they were reluctant to be witnesses. Murrieta had appeared once in a different case; he never made any appearance in the Hart-Robles cases and repeatedly broke his promises to do so. Borjorquez never testified in any case, but he did appear for one interview. He, too, repeatedly broke his promises to Agent Lugo. The Government also knew tha.t both informants regularly left the country and could not then be reached by *807process. Despite that knowledge, the Government did not detain them as material witnesses, nor did it arrange to take their testimony by deposition. (18 U.S.C. § 3149; Rule 46(b) Fed.R.Crim.P.; United States v. Verduzco-Macias (9th Cir. 1972) 463 F.2d 105; Bacon v. United States (9th Cir. 1971) 449 F.2d 933.) It did not withhold their pay. (Contrast United States v. Verduzco-Macias, supra.) On the contrary, the Government paid them in full, thus assuring them adequate funds to arrange their own transportation to Mexico.
Accordingly, I would reverse both convictions and remand the cases to the district court for further proceedings consistent with the views herein expressed.
Circuit Judges KOELSCH, BROWNING and ANTHONY M. KENNEDY concur in Judge HUFSTEDLER’s concurring and dissenting opinion. Circuit Judge ELY concurs in Judge HUFSTEDLER’s opinion and files a separate opinion. Judge DUNIWAY concurs in part B of Judge HUFSTED-LER’s concurring and dissenting opinion, and files a separate opinion.

. These are civil cases, but no reason exists to apply a more restrictive standard of appellate review to criminal cases. On the contrary, a respectable argument can be made that deeper, rather than shallower appellate scrutiny should be given to criminal cases because the societal and personal stakes in criminal cases are often larger than in civil cases.