Court Opinion

ID: 9702440
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 23:11:37.415887+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:37.522256
License: Public Domain

R. M. Maher, J.
(dissenting). The police tactics that were used to encourage defendant to deliver heroin to the undercover agent are appalling. I must vote to reverse defendant’s conviction.
Deceitful manipulation of romantic involvements and sexual attachments may be exciting devices in a James Bond adventure. Taken from the fantasy world of espionage thrillers and placed in a pathetic attempt by local police to control drug traffic, the scenario brings on horror and disgust.
The focus should be on the conduct of DeWitt Duncan. His actions, which must be attributed to the police, People v Stanley, 68 Mich App 559; 243 NW2d 684 (1976), are much more reprehensible *127than those detailed in People v Turner, 390 Mich 7; 210 NW2d 336 (1973). When feigned friendship and fictitious stories by an undercover agent of a girlfriend in need of drugs were used to encourage a drug transaction, the Supreme Court in Turner found overreaching by the police. Here the police took advantage of a ten-year relationship that was much closer than the relationship abused in Turner. Duncan was sleeping with defendant and discussing marriage with her when he proposed that she, for the first time, take part in a drug transaction.
This Court in People v Soper, 57 Mich App 677; 226 NW2d 691 (1975), condemned the exploitation of a childhood friendship by an undercover agent in a plan to persuade defendant to obtain heroin. The tactics used against defendant here are much more repugnant.
Why DeWitt Duncan stooped so low to set up his lover is not answered. But I can think of no answer that would allow Duncan or the police operating with him to escape condemnation.
The Supreme Court in Turner looked to venerable observations about the proper role of our law enforcement agencies when it adopted the objective test for entrapment.
The Turner opinion, 390 Mich at 16-17, quotes Justice Marston’s concurrence in Saunders v People, 38 Mich 218, 222 (1878):
"Human nature is frail enough at best, and requires no encouragement in wrong-doing. If we cannot assist another and prevent him from violating the laws of the land, we at least should abstain from any active efforts in the way of leading him into temptation.”
Defendant was entrapped, and her conviction should be reversed.