Court Opinion

ID: 9491123
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:04:23.928425+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:31.464724
License: Public Domain

PHILLIPS, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I think the district court properly ruled that the evidence did not suffice to require submission of an issue of entrapment to the jury. Though Agent O’Neill’s endeavors leading up to Sligh’s offer of a bribe were persistent, possibly deceitful in some respects, and surely intended to invite the end result, they fell well short of the kind of overreaching government conduct that we have considered necessary to support an entrapment defense. I therefore dissent and would affirm the conviction for the conceded bribe offer.
The majority correctly states the controlling legal principles of entrapment, both substantive and procedural. Under those principles, the only issue before us is whether there was evidence “more than a scintilla” from which a jury properly could find that O’Neill’s conduct crossed the line between permissible “solicitation” of the bribe — merely providing an opportunity for its offer — and possibly exculpating “inducement” of the offer — actually causing a criminal intent in Sligh’s mind that would not otherwise have existed. See United States v. Daniel, 3 F.3d 775, 778 (4th Cir.1993) (differentiating the two). While the weight or quantity of the required evidence of inducement is slight, the content requirement is rigorous. The conduct evidenced must be so severe and pervasive that it can legitimately be viewed as sufficient to overcome the will of a reasonable person. See Crisp v. United States, 262 F.2d 68, 69 (4th Cir.1958). As we have characterized it more recently, it must involve “governmental overreaching” sufficient “to implant a criminal design in the mind of an innocent party,” United States v. Phan, 121 F.3d 149, 154 (4th Cir.1997), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 118 S.Ct. 1038, 140 L.Ed.2d 104 (1998) (footnote omitted), and as conduct “likely to displace mens rea” United States v. DeVore, 423 F.2d 1069, 1072 (4th Cir.1970). And it is insufficient to meet this inducement requirement merely to establish that the government was the first to suggest the illegal conduct. See United States v. El-Gawli, 837 F.2d 142, 149 (3d Cir.1988).
Short of conduct actually calculated to “implant a criminal design” in an innocent mind — no inconsiderable feat — federal law has long permitted, out of perceived necessity, law-enforcement endeavors that invite criminal conduct, or make it convenient, or that employ “[ajrtifice and stratagem” in order to “catch those engaged in criminal enterprises.” Jacobson v. United States, 503 U.S. 540, 548, 112 S.Ct. 1535, 1540, 118 L.Ed.2d 174 (1992) (citing Sorrells v. United States, 287 U.S. 435, 441, 53 S.Ct. 210, 77 L.Ed. 413 (1932); Sherman v. United States, 356 U.S. 369, 372, 78 S.Ct. 819, 820-21, 2 L.Ed.2d 848 (1958); United States v. Russell, 411 U.S. 423, 435-36, 93 S.Ct. 1637, 1644-45, 36 L.Ed.2d 366 (1973)). In deference to this recognized necessity, the federal courts have in general found a basis for allowing an entrapment issue to go to the jury only in unique and compelling situations. See Unit*768ed States v. Gendron, 18 F.3d 955, 961-62 (1st Cir.1994) (collecting cases). Examples include physical threat, see United States v. Becerra, 992 F.2d 960, 963 (9th Cir.1993) (physical threats to defendant’s family); and falsely-based appeals to sympathy, see United States v. Nations, 764 F.2d 1073, 1080 (5th Cir.1985) (false claims of cancer to induce aid in selling stolen cars).
The evidence here, though it surely could be thought to demonstrate a relentlessly pursued “artifice or stratagem” by O’Neill to “catch” Sligh, shows no such overreaching. No threats were ever made. Compare United States v. Skarie, 971 F.2d 317, 320 (9th Cir.1992) (finding threats of impaling the defendant and harming her son sufficient to constitute inducement). Requests to violate the law (even if made) were not consistent and overwhelming. Compare United States v. Joost, 92 F.3d 7, 13 (1st Cir.1996) (finding evidence of inducement where government created a dependent relationship between agent and known felon and where governmental contacts were repeatedly made over an extended period of time); United States v. Groll, 992 F.2d 755, 759 (7th Cir.1993) (finding inducement where government agent called defendant every day for over a month and then threatened her when she appeared to be backing out of drug sale). Nor was Sligh “wined and dined” in a manner that could have implanted any previously unheld criminal design in his mind. Compare United States v. Fedroff, 874 F.2d 178, 184-85 (3d Cir.1989) (finding inducement where government agents paid for defendant’s expensive meals and gambling trips in an effort to get him accustomed to the lifestyle). No fraudulent misrepresentations were put forth and there was never an attempt to play on the feelings or personal weaknesses of Sligh. Compare United States v. Martinez, 122 F.3d 1161, 1164-65 (9th Cir.1997) (finding inducement where government agent repeatedly promised friendship and wealth); United States v. Montanez, 105 F.3d 36, 39 (1st Cir.1997) (reversing drug distribution conviction because jury was not instructed on appeals to sympathy as a basis for inducement). In short, my reading of the evidence is that up to the very end of the obviously wary negotiations being conducted with O’Neill, had Sligh not wanted all along to offer O’Neill a bribe “all he had to do was say no and walk away.” United States v. Wilson, 129 F.3d 949, 951 (7th Cir.1997). Consider the final exchange leading up to the fatal offer. It opens with O’Neill’s legitimately closing off the several routes of a possible legal fix that had been intimated over the course of the protracted conversations — prolonged as much by Sligh as by O’Neill,
O’Neill: So, based on that particular route, there’s nothing I can do.
Sligh: Right. But you know, that something can be done.
O’Neill: Uhhuhn.
Sligh: Because that’s what you do.
O’Neill: Yeah.
Sligh: And I’m sure you seen many different types of case changes, where they were able to be handled. So, if that’s something that’s possible, and uh, only thing I need to know—
O’Neill: Okay—
Sligh: — is what I need to do to make that uh, transpire.
O’Neill: Okay. I guess I need to know from you, what exactly are you asking me to do (Laughter).
Sligh: Uh, oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Is it just you and me?
O’Neill: Yeah, just you and me.
Sligh: You drove a car?
O’Neill: Yup. I have my own car, yup, they gave me a license....
Sligh: So, how much you owe on it?
O’Neill: Twenty-three hundred____
Sligh: All right. So, uh, as a, as a, kind and giving per son, I can help you own it.
These are not the words of an overwhelmed wary innocent whose will to obey the law has been overborne by the implanting of a criminal design not his own. A jury should not be permitted to speculate on that possibility as the district court quite properly concluded.
In conclusion, I venture that the majority has been led astray from the proper entrapment analysis by an undue absorption with *769and apparent outrage at the objective nature of O’Neill’s conduct — to the point of suggesting that it amounted to the “crime of an overzealous bureaucrat.” Op. at 12. The Supreme Court long ago in Sorrells specifically rejected, as decisive of the entrapment issue, the objective purity or impurity of the Government’s conduct. See Sorrells, 287 U.S. at 441, 53 S.Ct. at 212. The specific motivation for O’Neill’s conduct, whether prompted by her attendance at a bribery seminar, or by innate zeal, or vigor, or whatever, is irrelevant under federal-entrapment doctrine as I understand it. Accordingly, I think that the district court, properly recognizing this, rightly declined to allow in the proffered evidence of O’Neill’s attendance at the seminar.
I would affirm the conviction for this conceded violation of the federal bribery statute.