Court Opinion

ID: 9481281
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:13:26.293241+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:11.867907
License: Public Domain

REINHARDT, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I join in Parts I, II, and III of the court’s opinion. However, because in my view the defense of imperfect entrapment is a “mitigating circumstance of a kind ... not adequately taken into consideration by the Sentencing Commission in formulating the guidelines,” 18 U.S.C. § 3553(b); U.S.S.G. § 5K2.0, I cannot agree with my colleagues’ conclusion that such a defense, as a matter of law, can never serve as the basis for a downward departure. Accordingly, I dissent from Part IV of the opinion.
The majority holds that a defense of imperfect entrapment can never serve as a basis for a downward departure from the Guidelines sentencing range. My colleagues’ conclusion cannot be based on the fact that no provision of the Guidelines expressly authorizes a downward departure for an imperfect entrapment defense. After all, the whole point of a departure is to deal with circumstances which the Guidelines do not take into account or inadequately take into account.1 I take it then that the majority believes that as a matter of law the defense of imperfect entrapment is simply not the type of mitigating factor that could ever justify a downward departure. I disagree.
Contrary to the reasoning of the Eighth Circuit, see United States v. Streeter, 907 F.2d 781, 787 (8th Cir.1990), the fact that a defendant has not made out an entrapment defense sufficient to mitigate guilt does not dispose of the question whether his reluctant participation in a criminal activity should mitigate his sentence. In order for a defendant to prevail on an entrapment defense, he “must show that he was induced to commit the crime by a government agent and that he was not predisposed to commit the crime.” United States v. Moncini, 882 F.2d 401, 406 (9th Cir.1989). By pleading guilty, Dickey effectively admitted that he could not sustain the burden of proving both of these elements. He did not have an entrapment defense. The fact that a defendant cannot obtain an acquittal on an entrapment defense does not mean, however, that the government’s role in inducing him to commit the crime is irrelevant to the length of the sentence he should receive. Even though he may be unable to establish an entrapment defense, he may well be able to show that he participated reluctantly.
For example, a defendant may have no predisposition to commit the crime and yet be convicted if the entrapper was not acting as a government agent. The defendant must prove both elements of the entrapment defense. Moreover, we have taken a rather narrow view of when someone is a government agent. Even a long-time paid government informant has been held not to be such an agent for purposes of an entrapment defense. See United States v. Busby, 780 F.2d 804, 806 (9th Cir.1986). Thus, under our precedents, someone who has no predisposition to commit a crime, and who is induced to commit that crime by the repeated suggestions of a paid government informant2 will not be entitled to an entrapment defense — although had the en-trapper been on a full time D.E.A. salary the defense would be available. Clearly someone who has been “entrapped” by a paid informant is less culpable than a willing criminal who needs neither inducement nor persuasion to commit his crime.
It seems evident that reluctance or lack of predisposition that for one reason or another does not amount to a complete entrapment defense could under some cir*841cumstances justify a shorter sentence than would be appropriate for a more willing and enthusiastic participant in the same crime. This would be the case whether one views incarceration as serving a primarily retributive or incapacitative purpose. See U.S.S.G. ch. 1, Pt. A, Introduction, 3 p.s. (“As a practical matter, in most sentencing decisions both [of these] philosophies may prove consistent with the same result.”) A reluctant criminal is one who is both less morally blameworthy than an enthusiastic one and less likely to commit other crimes if not incarcerated.
It is probable that only in very rare cases would an imperfect entrapment defense justify a Guidelines departure. And I do not mean to suggest that this is necessarily one of those rare cases. Nevertheless, the defendant is entitled to have the district court consider the question. No policy or provision of the Guidelines justifies the majority’s decision to foreclose completely the possibility that imperfect entrapment may on occasion justify a downward departure.
As the majority notes, the record does not clearly disclose whether the district court exercised its discretion not to depart downward based upon a determination that Dickey was not entitled to a defense of imperfect entrapment or whether the district court believed that such a defense could never serve as the basis for a departure. Because in my view the latter belief would constitute reversible error, I would remand on this issue so that the district court may make the necessary discretionary determination here as well.

. As neither the government nor my colleagues dispute, the Guidelines nowhere take imperfect entrapment into account as a mitigating factor.

. The record indicates that the person who Dickey claims induced him to commit the crimes involved here was a government informant. Thus, his attorney may have properly advised him that he could not prevail on an entrapment defense because he was not entrapped by a government agent.