Court Opinion

ID: 9456477
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:54:24.373653+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:59.768729
License: Public Domain

HUFSTEDLER, Circuit Judge,
dissenting :
To avoid the impact of Bruton v. United States (1968) 391 U.S. 123, 88 S.Ct. 1620, 20 L.Ed.2d 476, the majority expands the defense of entrapment beyond the bounds of any federal case and applies that newly created doctrine to affirm Arceneaux’s conviction despite the fact that the jury was not instructed on the law as the majority now pronounces it.
Easley’s statements against Arceneaux were inadmissible unless those statements were relevant for a nonhearsay purpose. The Bruton problem inheres from the admission of those statements with the district court’s instruction that the jury should consider them only against Arceneaux’s codefendant. To bypass Bruton, the majority has to find a way to make the evidence admissible against Arceneaux, and to do that, it is necessary to discover an issue to which Easley’s statements could be relevant without regard to the truth of the matters asserted. That feat is accomplished by holding that the defense of entrapment is available if the Government’s state of mind was ignoble even if the person who induced the crime was not an agent of the Government. The majority then reasons that Easley’s statement was relevant to the issue of the Government’s state of mind in that it tended to prove that the Government was not ignobly motivated.
There may well be merit to the extension of entrapment propounded by the majority, but the law in this circuit has been long settled that the defense rests on an inducement to commit the crime by one who is a Government agent and that the Government’s state of mind, ignoble or pure, is irrelevant. (E. g., Notaro v. United States (9th Cir. 1966) 363 F.2d 169; Gonzales v. United States (9th Cir. 1958) 251 F.2d 298.).
If the doctrine of entrapment should be thus expanded, due process forbids its application to a defendant who was not given any opportunity to try the issue. The jury was told not to consider the evidence at all against Arceneaux. It was never instructed that the Government’s knowledge of Easley’s inducement would have been enough to prove entrapment even if Easley were not a Government agent. Indeed, it was instructed that entrapment was possible “if Harry Easley had acquired the status of an agent or employee of the government prior to the attempted bank robbery.”
I turn to the Bruton question. The Government argues that Bruton should not apply because it involved a codefend-ant’s confession instead of a third person’s damaging statements, and, in Bru-*928ton, the evidence was introduced by the Government and not, as here, by a eode-fendant. I think that these differences are not enough to withdraw Arceneaux from the reach of Bruton.
The teaching of Bruton is that reversal is required whenever evidence, inadmissible against one defendant, is admitted against a codefendant despite limiting instructions whenever “the risk that the jury will not, or cannot, follow instructions is so great, and the consequences of failure so vital to the defendant, that the practical and human limitations of the jury system cannot be ignored.” (391 U.S. at 135, 88 S.Ct. at 1627.) The Court in Bruton was particularly concerned about a codefendant’s confession, because the truth of one defendant’s accusations against another is suspect and because the truth of such accusations can rarely be tested by cross-examination. Easley’s statements were just as suspect and just as damaging as the eodefendant’s confession in Bruton. Easley’s death placed him farther beyond cross-examination than would the Fifth Amendment. I would hold that the introduction, over objection, of a third person’s damaging hearsay statements against a defendant who cannot subject the declarant to cross-examination at the time of trial requires reversal, although the jury has received a limiting instruction. (Cf. Dutton v. Evans (1970) 400 U.S. 74, 91 S.Ct. 210, 27 L.Ed.2d 213; Pointer v. Texas (1965) 380 U.S. 400, 85 S.Ct. 1065, 13 L.Ed.2d 923; United States v. Jones (2d Cir. 1968) 402 F.2d 851.)
I do not think that the result should be different in this case because the hearsay evidence was offered by a code-fendant and not by the Government. The impact upon the defendant of the introduction of that hearsay is the same regardless of who produced it. There is no suggestion in Bruton, as there was in Miranda and Mapp, that the Court’s purpose was to deter improper governmental conduct; rather, the Court’s aim was to protect a defendant from inadmissible damaging evidence that would be used against him and that he could not effectively challenge. Moreover, this is not a case in which the Government was unaware of the possibility that one of the codefendants would try to use the words of Easley to vindicate himself at the expense of his codefendant, because both defendants indicated their intent to rely on entrapment when each moved for severance. The Bruton problem was hovering at the threshold of the case. (Cf. People v. Matola (1968) 259 Cal.App.2d 686, 66 Cal.Rptr. 610.)
I would reverse the conviction and remand the cause for a new trial.