Court Opinion

ID: 9454947
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:04:49.12478+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:23.556824
License: Public Domain

GODBOLD, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
I am unable to join in an affirmance. The evidence of possession of narcotics was insufficient under numerous decisions of this and other courts which the majority neither mention nor discuss.
Fitzpatrick v. United States, 410 F.2d 513, 5th Cir. 1969; Montoya v. United States, 402 F.2d 847 (5th Cir. 1968); Paige v. United States, 394 F.2d 105 (5th Cir. 1968); Julian v. United States, 391 F.2d 279 (9th Cir. 1968); Allison v. United States, 348 F.2d 152 (10th Cir. 1965); Guevara v. United States, 242 F.2d 745 (5th Cir. 1957); Barfield v. United States, 229 F.2d 936 (5th Cir. 1956); Camilla v. United States, 207 F.2d 339 (6th Cir. 1953).
In the context here concerned possession means actual control, dominion or authority. Fitzpatrick, supra; Allison, supra; Barfield, supra. Mere suspicion of possession is not enough. Paige, supra. Because unexplained possession will authorize a conviction, the evidence relied on as proof of possession must be scrutinized with care to prevent grave injustice. Guevara, supra.
From the evidence of fluorescent powder on appellant’s hands the jury could infer that appellant touched the package in the process of removing the outer wrapper (a paper sack) or in the process of rewrapping the package (in the towel), or at some point between these two operations. In the interim between the two operations the interior wrapping (a newspaper dusted with fluorescent powder) would have been exposed, and, if the newspaper also was unwrapped and replaced before the package was re-wrapped in the towel, the prophylactic (also dusted with fluorescent powder) would have been exposed temporarily.
The informant did not testify. From the time that the informant entered the car the record is silent on his actions and the actions of all other occupants as well. We do not know who removed the outer wrapping, and who rewrapped the parcel in the towel, and whether in the interval the inner (newspaper) wrapping was so disturbed as to reveal the contents. We do not know who placed the towel-wrapped package in front of where appellant was sitting. Whether appellant’s physical contact with the parcel was intentional, fortuitous, or on request of the informant or of Mrs. Vela, is wholly speculative. Whether appellant’s contact consisted of the affirmative act of unwrapping or rewrapping or was a transitory handling or a passive holding, is only a subject of guess. Whether he knew there were drugs in the package is no less speculative.
Regardless of whether appellant’s touching consisted of affirmative acts or of mere passive holding of the package, there is no evidence tending to show that what he did constituted an assertion of control or dominion in his own behalf rather than simply the act of an unwitting dupe for Mrs. Vela or for the informant. The concurring opinion of *216Judge Brown in Barfield, supra, discussing the driving of a stolen car by a hitchhiker, points up some of the problems not wrestled with by the majority in the present case:
In this light, I think much more must be shown than mere driving of a vehicle by one temporarily in the car as a hitchhiker. First, it lacks the essential characteristics of possession.
Driving can be and frequently is in the ordinary experience of men, merely the exercise of a temporary control over the physical movements of the vehicle. While the fact of driving by one alone in the vehicle might under many situations afford a basis for men to believe that such driver has, or is claiming to exercise, the right of dominion or full control over its disposition or use and thus has possession of.it, this does not hold, without more, for one temporarily driving for another then in the vehicle.
229 F.2d at 942-943. In measuring whether there is such assertion of dominion as to constitute possession, the touching of a package, with the scope, quality, purpose and nature of the contact unrevealed, is an act far more ambiguous than the affirmative and continuing acts of controlling and operating an automobile.
In other Dyer Act cases evidence showing no more than that the accused was in physical contact with the stolen property — either by touching it or sitting in it, or both — has been held insufficient to meet the requirements of assertion of control or dominion, requiring the grant of a motion for judgment of acquittal. In Allison the defendant’s fingerprints were on the right front door and he was observed sitting in the right front seat while the car was standing still. In Camilla eight fingerprints of appellant were found on the rear vision mirror about a week after the car was stolen. The defendant in Julian was found asleep in Nevada in a car that recently had been stolen in Texas. The last lawful possessor of the car in Texas had left in it his checkbook and savings passbook. Both of these were found in the pocket of the defendant. This evidence was held insufficient to satisfy the test of guilt beyond reasonable doubt and the Dyer Act conviction was reversed.
Possession may be proved by circumstantial evidence, but the evidence must exclude every reasonable hypothesis except that of guilt. E. g., Montoya, supra; Guevara, supra. In this case the flimsy net of speculation, conjecture and guilt by association falls far short of the requirements of possession that can deprive an accused of his liberty and send him to the penitentiary if he does not come forward with an explanation. The inference that appellant got out of the car and talked to the informant does not change the nature of appellant’s physical contact with the package. So far as this record shows he may have done no more than ask informant his name. Appellant is not charged with conspiracy, and his conviction may not stand on the theory that he was vicariously, in possession as an aider and abettor of Mrs. Vela. Fitzpatrick, supra; Barfield, supra (footnote 5 to concurring opinion, 229 F.2d at 943).
I turn to the second reversible error, refusal to charge the jury on entrapment. This is almost a classic case requiring an entrapment instruction. The problem is not, as phrased by the majority, whether the government concocted a scheme to trap innocent or unwary persons. That misconceives the nature of entrapment. The government’s motives may be the highest but its actions such that the issue of entrapment must go to the jury.
If there is any evidence in the record that, if believed by the jury, would show that the government’s conduct created a substantial risk that the offense would be committed by a person other than one ready to commit it, then, as in all other cases involving questions of guilt or innocence, the jury must be permitted to resolve the matter.
*217Pierce v. United States, 414 F.2d 163, 5 Cir. 1969.
Entrapment is concerned with two areas of evidence, the evidence of what the government did (the “inducement”) and the evidence of whether the defendant is one not likely or not ready to commit the crime (the “predisposition”). The leading case is United States v. Sherman, 200 F.2d 880 (2d Cir. 1952). Sherman establishes also that the burden of proof of governmental activity is on the defendant and the burden of proof of predisposition is on the government. This has been expressly approved in the Fifth Circuit. E. g. Kivette v. United States, 230 F.2d 749 (5th Cir. 1956). Pierce articulates the standard to be employed in examining the state of the evidence. The defendant’s burden was fully discharged in this case, because the government’s own evidence disclosed a course of governmental conduct creating “substantial risk” that the offense might be committed by one innocent or unready. The only evidence of “predisposition” is that appellant got out of the car and said something to the in-foz’mant.
Appellant was not shown to have any connection with Mrs. Vela, with the listed telephone, with the telephone conversation, with the informant, or with the transaction other than the facts of what occurred at the scene of the buy. In the end, guilt rests on the appellant’s presence at the scene and his touching of a package containing contraband. As already developed in detail, the record is wholly silent on the facts of his contact with the package, introduced by the informant into the confined limits of a car occupied by several persons. The package was dusted with the fluorescent powder to create a physical link in a chain of evidence that would lead to the person or persons who touched the package.. One who came in contact with the package might be a purveyor of narcotics exerting dominion over his purchase, he might be one touching accidentally or intentionally but inadvertently, or he might be a wholly innocent participant touching at the specific request or instigation of the non-testifying informant. The risks are too high that the link of physical contact in the chain of evidence was forged by contact with the package by one not asserting dominion or control at all or, if by one asserting dominion or control, by one not ready to commit the offense. The evidence does not meet the standard articulated in Pierce, requiring that it be “uncontradicted that the government did not employ methods of persuasion or inducement that would create a substantial risk that the offense would be committed by a person who was not ready to commit it.”1 The burden of proof having been met as to the scope and quality of governmental conduct (the “inducement”) a jury issue was present. The issue which this court is required to consider in this case is not whether one innocent or not ready to commit the offense was in fact swept up by physical contact with the package, but whether there was substantial risk of that occurring. The substantial risk was present. This entitled the appellant to have the jury consider under proper instructions the issue of entrapment, which includes both areas of inquiry — what the government did and whether appellant was predisposed. The majority view Pierce as correctly stating the law of *218entrapment. But in my view they have not correctly applied the principles of that case to the facts before us.
I respectfully dissent.

. Testimony by the informant as to what he did and said, after the informant entered the car, might have minimized the substantial risk that there was physical contact with the package by one not intending to assert dominion or control, or one asserting dominion but not ready to commit the offense. There was no such testimony in this case.
The range of possibilities would at least have been narrowed had there been evi-deuce of whether after the buy the informant had fluorescent powder on his hands. Compare the usual meticulous care with which the government, in sending an informant to make a buy, searches his clothing before he departs on his mission, to negate the possibility of his already having in his possession narcotics which he might later say he acquired from an accused seller.