Court Opinion

ID: 9457788
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:33:01.981811+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:30.454649
License: Public Domain

MERRILL, Circuit Judge,
(dissenting) :
L dissent from the judgments in favor of Becker and Thomas.
Were this a case of assistance urged on reluctant suspects who desired to abandon a project, I would regard it as a case of entrapment. As the majority notes, however, the crime was conceived by appellants and they were, throughout, predisposed to commit it. As I read the record, they were more than predisposed; they were eager to make the big time with the assistance of the government agent in meeting their production problems.
The majority concludes that while this is not a case of entrapment the same underlying objections which render entrapment repugnant are operative here. I disagree. Government involvement throughout was in response to the requests and needs of the appellants, and the extent of involvement was fixed by the extent of those requests and needs. The government agent was doing no more than playing his cover role, which, in *788terms of involvement and the rendering of assistance, was a demanding one.
Entrapment as I view it is repugnant not because the Government has, through successful infiltration of a conspiracy, become an active participant in a criminal enterprise; it is repugnant because the Government has acted unworthily or unfairly in inducing commission of the crime. I do not regard it as unworthy or unfair to play a demanding cover role or to take advantage of the eagerness and naivete of suspects.
While I, too, have feelings of uneasiness about the extent of government involvement here, they do not stem from a sense of unworthiness but from a sense of unwisdom. I would question the administrative judgment that putting these small-time criminals back in jail was worth this elaborate expenditure of effort.
There may some day be a case where, through original conception, leadership and planning, government control is so pervasive as to render the crime in its entirety a governmental enterprise and where, on grounds other than entrapment, immunity should be extended to the criminal participants. I do not find that ease here.
Finally I would note that the telephone call from the government agent to Becker while the 1962 case against appellants was pending (to which call the majority opinion refers) did not suggest that illegal activities be resumed when Becker was free to do so. It was at most an inquiry as to whether Becker needed help. Had it urged a return to criminal activities I would readily concur with the majority. I do not like the discouragement of rehabilitation implicit in “Call me when you are out and we can take up just as before.” I would regard such an invitation as entrapment of a very special and invidious sort, with lack of predisposition conclusively presumed.