Court Opinion

ID: 9668494
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:16:28.883687+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:51:04.480688
License: Public Domain

OPINION ON STATE’S MOTION FOR REHEARING
DALLY, Judge.
State’s Motion for Rehearing will be granted.
The appellant admits that he unlawfully delivered methamphetamine, a controlled substance, to Charles Carpenter, but he asserts that although he committed the criminal offense charged, it has been shown as a matter of law in a pretrial hearing that he was entrapped and should therefore be acquitted. The panel’s majority agreed.
V.T.C.A. Penal Code, Section 8.06, provides:
“(a) It is a defense to prosecution that the actor engaged in the conduct charged because he was induced to do so by a law enforcement agent using persuasion or other means likely to cause persons to commit the offense. Conduct merely affording a person an opportunity to commit an offense does not constitute entrapment.
“(b) In this section ‘law enforcement agent’ includes personnel of the state and local law enforcement agencies as well as of the United States and any person acting in accordance with instructions from such agents.”
The appellant’s testimony, as set out in the panel’s majority opinion, is that Gray, with whom the appellant had grown up, known for twelve years, and whose half-sister he dated, called him one evening and told him that he, Gray, had friends he had known for a year and one-half who wanted to buy some dope. Gray promised the appellant he would get the appellant high on dope if he would get the dope for Gray’s friends.
Is the promise to the appellant — to get him high on dope if he obtained dope he didn’t possess and delivered it on a parking lot to strangers — made by Gray, appellant’s long time friend, “persuasion or other means likely to cause persons to commit the offense” charged? We find appellant’s testimony does not raise an issue of entrapment. A promise to get appellant high on dope is so unlikely to induce a person not already so disposed, to commit the criminal offense charged as to not even raise the issue of entrapment. The facts of this case require that the judgment be affirmed regardless of whether an objective or a subjective test of entrapment is applied.1
The State’s Motion for Rehearing is granted and the judgment is affirmed.
ROBERTS, CLINTON and TEAGUE, JJ., dissent.

. The author of this opinion does not agree that V.T.C.A. Penal Code, Section 8.06, makes it apparent that the legislature intended to establish the objective test for entrapment recognized in Norman v. State, 588 S.W.2d 340 (Tex.Cr.App.1979); Langford v. State, 571 S.W.2d 326 (Tex.Cr.App.1978); and see Langford v. State, 578 S.W.2d 737 (Tex.Cr.App.1979). Section 8.06, the commentary notwithstanding, provides a balance test which includes the defendant’s predisposition to commit a criminal offense.
Also, as the panel’s majority opinion points out the defense of entrapment is unique; it is the only defense which is authorized to be tried prior to the trial on its merits. Art. 28.01 § 1(9), V.A.C.C.P. However, this permissible procedure is generally undesirable because it permits the piecemeal trial of a criminal case.
The trial judge in this instance held a pretrial hearing to determine the issue of entrapment. Although Art. 28.01, V.A.C.C.P. allows such a procedure, it is not required; a trial judge may refuse a pretrial hearing, and the defendant may then present his evidence when the case is tried on its merits. See Cantu v. State, 546 S.W.2d 621 (Tex.Cr.App.1977); Hicks v. State, 508 S.W.2d 400 (Tex.Cr.App.1974); Bell v. State, 442 S.W.2d 716 (Tex.Cr.App.1969); Bosley v. State, 414 S.W.2d 468 (Tex.Cr.App.1967), cert. denied 389 U.S. 876, 88 S.Ct. 172, 19 L.Ed.2d 162.