Court Opinion

ID: 9701905
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:42:47.983843+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:09:50.498651
License: Public Domain

CERCONE, Judge
(concurring and dissenting) :
While I agree with Part I of the majority opinion, I disagree with the analysis and conclusion reached in Part II.
The majority is simply incorrect when it states: “The appellant’s defense is that he had no intention of engaging in illegal activity until he was persuaded to do so by the officer’s agent. The element in dispute is criminal intent.” (Majority opinion at 243 Pa.Super. p. 536, at p. 283). What the majority has done to reach its desired conclusion, I submit, is equivocate on the meaning of “intent.”
The predisposition to commit a crime as used with respect to the entrapment defense has absolutely nothing to do with criminal intent in the instant case.1 The criminal intent in question herein is whether appellant intended to sell a controlled substance (marijuana) at the time that he sold it. For the purpose of proving the offense, it makes no difference whether he “intended” to sell the marijuana one week or one minute before he did so; a fortiori, it matters little whether he would have formulated such a previous “intent” were it not for the actions of an agent provocateur.
The defense of entrapment rests upon a theory of estoppel; that is, the government is estopped from prosecuting an individual for committing a crime that would not have been committed without the provocation of the government. R. Perkins, Criminal Law 1035-36 (2d ed. 1969). Thus, the inquiry with respect to that defense is whether the intent to commit the crime originated *539with the defendant or with the government, and the intent of the actor at the time the crime was committed is irrelevant to the entrapment defense. Id. at 1033. It is apparent, therefore, that the majority is confusing the intent which denotes an element of a substantive crime, with “origination of intent” (or preferably, predisposition) which was an element of the defense of entrapment in Pennsylvania.
Technically, when entrapment is the sole defense, the defendant’s conduct has fulfilled all the elements of the substantive crime. See Comment, 59 Iowa L.Rev. 655 (1974); Note, 20 U.Fla.L.Rev. 63, 65 (1967); Mikell, The Doctrine of Entrapment in Federal Courts, 90 U.Pa.L. Rev. 245, 255 (1942). As the court stated in Whiting v. United States, 321 F.2d 72, 75-76 (1st Cir. 1963), cert. denied, 375 U.S. 884, 84 S.Ct. 158, 11 L.Ed.2d 114:
“So far as the individual defendant is concerned the defense has no logical core. The fact that a defendant’s actions were induced by a government representative does not mean that he did not commit all of the elements of the offense. If the inducement had come from parties having no connection with the government it would absolve him in no degree.” See also Carbajal-Portillo v. United States, 396 F.2d 944, 948 (9th Cir. 1968).
Thus, the entrapment defense has to do with the “manufacturing” of a crime by the government; it does not speak to the question of whether the elements of a crime proper have been committed. Lopez v. United States, 373 U.S. 427, 434, 83 S.Ct. 1381, 10 L.Ed.2d 462 (1963). If the defendant’s predisposition to commit a crime were equivalent to criminal intent, it should make no difference whether the government or a private person instilled the intent in the defendant’s mind; but, as pointed out above, this distinction is the very crux of the defense. See also W. LaFave & A. Scott, Handbook on *540Criminal Law 370-71 (1972). By obscuring the difference between “predisposition” and “intent,” the majority reaches the erroneous conclusions that entrapment goes to an element of the offense, and that under Rose, Dem-mitt and Graves the Commonwealth has the burden of disproving entrapment beyond a reasonable doubt.
Indeed, the error is so obvious that I have found no other court which has made it. True, some federal courts do require the government to disprove entrapment beyond a reasonable doubt. See, e.g., United States v. Watson, 489 F.2d 504 (3rd Cir. 1973). But, the federal courts which have so placed this burden on the government have employed their supervisory powers to do it. Id. at 511. See also Dixon v. District of Columbia, 129 U.S.App.D.C. 341, 394 F.2d 966, 970 (1968). Those courts decided that a charge to the jury allocating the burden of proof between the government and the defendant with respect to the two elements of entrapment was unnecessarily confusing, and that the entire matter of disproving entrapment should be left with the government. United States v. Watson, supra. That is, prior practice under the federal law, which was similar to Pennsylvania’s prior law,2 required the defendant to prove by a preponderance of the evidence, that the government’s conduct was sufficient to induce a previously innocently disposed person to engage in criminal conduct; thereafter, the government had the burden of proving that the defendant was not a person who fell within the protected class of persons (i. e., those not predisposed to commit a crime).3 Especially since the government was given the strategic advantage of proving prior crimes to establish predisposition it *541was Hot unfair to place the whole burden of proof upon it when entrapment was put in issue by the defendant.
Of course, the federal courts were struggling with the old standard of entrapment (provocative government conduct plus defendant’s innocent predisposition). See United States v. Russell, 411 U.S. 423, 93 S.Ct. 1637, 36 L.Ed.2d 366 (1973). In Pennsylvania, the Crimes Code has now replaced this old standard with the preferred standard of the Model Penal Code. The Crimes Code, 18 Pa.C.S.A. 313, provides in pertinent part:
“(a) General rule. — A public law enforcement official or a person acting in cooperation with Such an official perpetrates an entrapment if for the purpose of obtaining evidence of the commission of an offense, he induces or encourages another person to engage in conduct constituting such offense by either:
(1) making knowingly false representations designed to induce the belief that such conduct is not prohibited; or
(2) employing methods of persuasion or inducement which create a substantial risk that such an offense will be committed by persons other than those who are ready to commit it.
(b) Burden of proof. — Except as provided in subsection (c) of this section, a person prosecuted for an offense shall be acquitted if he proves by a preponderance of evidence that his conduct occurred in response to an entrapment.”
As is readily apparent, the burden of proving defendant’s innocent predisposition prior to committing the crime is no longer relevant to the defense of entrapment, so the need for discussion of whether entrapment involves “criminal -intent” is obsolescent. Furthermore, subsection b of Section 313 specifically provides that entrapment must be proved by the defendant by the pre*542ponderance of the evidence. Thus, the court today has merely created an agitating historical anachronism. Since the purpose of exercising supervisory powers is to regulate, not to agitate, today’s decision would make little sense even if it were to rest on the same basis as those federal cases which it cites approvingly.
Therefore, I dissent.
VAN der VOORT, J., concurs in the result.

. Indeed, in the vast majority of cases entrapment will have nothing to do with “criminal intent.” There is, however, at least one situation where entrapment arguably vitiates intent. See R. Perkins, Criminal Law 1031-32 (2d ed. 1969). See also Crimes Code, 18 Pa.C.S.A. 313(a)(1) (1973).

. See, e. g., Commonwealth v. Conway, 196 Pa.Super. 97, 173 A.2d 776 (1961).

. Compare Commonwealth v. Klein, 222 Pa.Super. 409, 411-413, 294 A.2d 815 (1972) (concurring opinion by Hoffman, J.).