Court Opinion

ID: 9465003
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 00:33:08.935803+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:38:55.662481
License: Public Domain

GODBOLD, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I concur in the result but with this additional statement.
I agree that Cross was not entitled to introduce evidence tending to show unrelated efforts by the officers to coerce payoffs from other persons, offered on the theory that it negated Cross’ predisposition to commit the bribery offense. In other circumstances such evidence might be admissible as circumstantial evidence of governmental involvement1 or as impeaching the credibil*105ity of the officers, but Cross disclaims any such purpose in this case.
Some of the evidence proffered by Cross and not admitted was not “unrelated.” If believed, it would have tended to show efforts by the police officers to coerce Cross through others. As noted by the Georgia Court of Appeals in Cross’ merits appeal:
The claim of entrapment was based upon testimony which tended to show the police officers McGlamery and Young were, through others importuning and inviting Cross to pay the money for protection and information as to raids, etc.
Cross v. State, 136 Ga.App. 400, 221 S.E.2d 615, 618 (1975). Such evidence was entitled to be considered, not as negating Cross’ predisposition but as tending to show governmental involvement. The trial court was, however, entitled to reject the proffered evidence as too tenuous and remote to submit to the jury on the governmental involvement issue. I cannot say that excluding it was error, or if error that it rose to constitutional dimensions.
I agree that on the facts of this case due process does not bar the conviction of the offense of bribery of the police officers who anticipated the defense and electronically taped the incident. I do not understand the court to be holding any more than that. Hampton v. U. S., which is cited as authority for the holding on this point, is not authority that there can never be a due process bar to a police-induced offense of a predisposed person. The opinion of Justice Rehnquist in Hampton, advancing the view that due process is not involved when the defendant is predisposed, was joined in by only two other justices. Justices Powell and Blackmun concurred in the result but declined to join in Justice Rehnquist’s discussion concerning the predisposed defendant. Three justices dissented on the ground, unrelated to the point I make here, that where a government agent sets up the defendant by supplying him with contraband and then brings in a potential purchaser the defendant is entrapped as a matter of law. See the discussion of this point in U. S. v. Tate, supra.

. U. S. v. Russell, 411 U.S. 423, 93 S.Ct. 1637, 36 L.Ed.2d 366 (1974) and Hampton v. U. S., 425 U.S. 484, 96 S.Ct. 1646, 48 L.Ed.2d 113 (1976), did not eliminate governmental activi*105ty from entrapment law. U. S. v. Tate, 554 F.2d 1341, 1344 (CA5, 1977). Without governmental activity entrapment does not become an issue. Now, as before, the purpose of the law of entrapment is curbing governmental activity so excessive as to be unacceptable to a civilized society. Id. The sufficiency of the evidence of governmental activity is a question of law for the court in the first instance. Id.; Pierce v. U. S„ 414 F.2d 163, 168 (CA5, 1969). If the court concludes that there is sufficient evidence of governmental involvement to submit the entrapment issue to the jury, the jury must consider both the inducing governmental involvement and defendant’s predisposition. Id.