Court Opinion

ID: 9673909
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:20:23.95324+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:24.754872
License: Public Domain

Levin, J.
(to reverse Court of Appeals and affirm circuit judge). Elvis S. Alford, a physician, was charged with violating § 41 of the Controlled Substances Act of 1971.1 The circuit judge quashed the information on alternative grounds. The Court of Appeals reversed. We would reverse the Court of Appeals and affirm the quashing of the information.
A physician, or other registrant under the act, is not immune from prosecution under § 41 simply because he is a registrant. When a physician delivers drugs, not as a physician, but as a pusher, he is subject to prosecution.
This proper standard for determining responsibility under § 41 is the subjective standard of whether the physician has in good faith dispensed or prescribed for a medical purpose. The prosecution must show that the physician did not dispense or prescribe in good faith for what he perceived to be a medical purpose. Evidence of a non-medical purpose must be adduced.
We would affirm the quashing of the informa*593tion on the ground that the judge did not clearly err in finding entrapment.2
I
Registration under the act does not confer immunity from prosecution under § 41.
Persons who deal with controlled substances in certain capacities must register and may then lawfully possess, manufacture and deliver drugs in their authorized capacities. A physician registers as a physician and is implicitly authorized to dispense or prescribe drugs in the exercise of his profession for medical purposes. A physician’s registration does not, however, authorize distribution of controlled substances for no medical purpose whatever.
It does not follow that because a physician may not traffic in drugs he can be prosecuted for simple departures from generally accepted standards of professional practice and ethics. Doctors not infrequently prescribe for patients who are not in their office, whom they have not examined, and over the telephone. Carelessness, bad judgment or malpractice is one thing; intent to traffic in drugs and *594distributing in bad faith for a non-medical purpose is quite another.
In People v Downes, 394 Mich 17, 33; 228 NW2d 212 (1975), a case decided under the prior controlled substances act, this Court declared that "[t]he instructional focus under such law must always be upon defendant’s state of mind”. A physician may prescribe drugs carelessly, hastily or over-zealously, but he does so as a physician, albeit a poor one, as long as he acts in a good-faith belief that he is doing so for a medical or professionally recognized purpose. It is only when this subjective good-faith intent is lacking that he exceeds the privilege of his registration, acts outside the scope of his profession, and criminal intent may be found.
II
The Court has adopted an objective test of entrapment, focusing on the propriety of the police conduct rather than the defendant’s predisposition to engage in the proscribed activity. People v Turner, 390 Mich 7; 210 NW2d 336 (1973).3
Whether a defendant was entrapped is a question for the judge:
*595"In deciding the entrapment question the trial court should make specific findings of fact. Should the trial court find the claim of entrapment to be proved, the related charge will be dismissed. If the court finds the claimed entrapment not proved, the prosecution will proceed.
"The trial court’s finding will be subject to appellate review under the clearly erroneous standard.” People v D’Angelo, 401 Mich 167, 183; 257 NW2d 655 (1977).
The. circuit judge applied the Turner test and made specific findings as required by D’Angelo.4
We have, in accordance with D’Angelo, reviewed *596those findings by the clearly erroneous standard, and cannot say that we are "left with the definite and firm conviction that a mistake has been committed”. Tuttle v Dep’t of State Highways, 397 Mich 44, 46; 243 NW2d 244 (1976).
As the circuit judge found, the officer did make eight or nine visits to Alford before the alleged unlawful delivery. Alford did ask if he was selling the drugs; the officer denied that he was. The officer did tell Alford that his wife was overweight and therefore needed similar prescriptions.
The officer made eight or nine visits to Alford for the sole purpose of encouraging him to commit a crime. The circuit judge, thus, did not err in finding that "[t]he officer persisted in a repeated course of conduct after the first visit which was calculated to induce and instigate the commission of an offense which would not have occurred but for the officer’s persistent, clever, persuasive, and deceptive efforts”.
We would reverse the Court of Appeals and affirm the circuit judge’s quashing of the information.
Kavanagh, J., concurred with Levin, J.

 MCL 335.341; MSA 18.1070(41).

 Alford was charged with two counts of unlawful delivery under §41. The first count concerned prescribing 120 amphetamine capsules, the second, dispensing 103 barbiturate capsules. It was charged that Alford dispensed and prescribed these drugs outside "the course of [his] professional practice”.
The circuit judge granted the motion to quash on the following grounds: (1) Alford’s acts did not constitute delivery under § 41, (2) the statute "either frees licensed physicians, without qualification, to hand out barbiturate drugs, or it permits them to hand out such drugs to people who come to their offices for professional consultation regardless of whether the physicians’ conduct falls short of the standards of skill, care and ethics customarily employed by their co-professionals”, and (3) Alford was entrapped.
The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that physicians are subject to prosecution under § 41 for prescribing and dispensing and that Alford was not entrapped.

 The prosecutor argues that because the police conduct occurred in March, 1973 and People v Turner, 390 Mich 7; 210 NW2d 336 (1973), was not decided until September of that year, the objective test should not be applied in this case.
The motion to quash was heard after Turner was decided. In People v D’Angelo, 401 Mich 167; 257 NW2d 655 (1977), and People v Sheline, id., the judges submitted the entrapment issue to the jury. In Sheline the Court of Appeals reversed, holding that under Turner the entrapment issue should have been decided by the judge and not the jury. In D’Angelo the judge granted a new trial for the same reason. This Court declared: "Since the trials in both of these cases took place well after the Turner decision, we affirm the Court of Appeals conclusion that the trial courts erred in submitting the issue of entrapment to the respective juries.” People v D’Angelo, supra, p 177.
It is the date of trial that is determinative, not of police conduct.

 The circuit judge found:
"Applying the objective standard to the facts in question, we have a situation in which entrapment has occurred. A law officer sought out the defendant for the purpose of causing the defendant to commit a crime in such a way as to furnish the officer with the evidence thereof. The defendant did not seek out or solicit the police officer to engage in illicit business.
"The police officer misrepresented himself as a patient and, after a cursory physical examination and history-taking, he obtained the prescription of a controlled substance.
"Thereafter, he made some seven or eight separate return visits, winning the confidence of the physician, more and more, with each visit. On each visit the officer asked the physician to do things which the officer believed to be criminal in nature.
"The officer offered to sign his name and other names in the book of account which the physician kept respecting controlled substances.
"The officer told the physician that he was not selling or profiting from the drugs furnished or prescribed by the physician.
"He prevailed on the physician to prescribe amphetamines for a fictitious overweight wife and to prescribe controlled substances for fictitious friends.
"No one is claiming that the physician violated the law by his handing out and prescribing controlled substances on the officer’s first visit. Nor is the evidence sufficient to show that, at the time of the first visit, the doctor was ready, willing and able to commit the offense of unlawful delivery or unlawful prescription. The first visit was designed to gain the doctor’s confidence, allay his suspicions and 'to soften him up’ for future importuning. The officer persisted in a repeated course of conduct after the first visit which was calculated to induce and instigate the commission of an offense which would not have occurred but for the officer’s persistent, clever, persuasive, and deceptive efforts. The officer did more than to merely provide an opportunity for the commission of a crime. He generated and manufactured some allegedly criminal conduct which would not have occurred without his earnest, energetic and persistent efforts.”