Court Opinion

ID: 9467952
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:00:36.911121+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:36.507501
License: Public Domain

*352GEE, Circuit Judge, with whom BROWN, AINSWORTH, CHARLES CLARK, TJO-FLAT, RUBIN, REAVLEY, RANDALL and SAM D. JOHNSON,
join, dissenting:
In my view, the persuasive majority opinion arrives at its result by treating one-half of a recurring fact situation as though it did not exist, by over-simplifying Supreme Court precedent, and by all but preempting a discretion reposed in the district court by Rule 403, Federal Rules of Evidence. Because I am in serious doubt about the result so arrived at and am, moreover, unwilling so ruefully to run down the flag on a twenty-year course of decision in our circuit, I respectfully dissent.

The Recurring Fact Situation

The majority correctly notes that the entrapment defense is unique to our country’s jurisprudence.1 In practice, it takes the form of an attack on the prosecution as being one for a crime that was instigated by the government itself — a further instance of our American love of fair play, our distrust of sovereigns, and our taste for a near-run thing. As we shall see later, the Supreme Court has never entirely agreed about why such a defense should be recognized at all.
In one persistent view, discussed at greater length below, the primary focus is on the courts, as above compromising their integrity by entertaining prosecutions for contrived offenses instigated by the police. In the other, it is on the Congress, as not having intended to punish such literal transgressions of a statute as are instigated by the government’s unseen, insidious hand. At all events, in both theoretical formulations some such term as “instigated” or “induced” is an indispensible ingredient. Here is the rub.
Viewing any given situation where one contends that he was “induced” to commit an act, two factors are inherent in the analysis. One is the susceptibility of the subject, the other the strength of the inducement. This case is no exception, as the defendant’s own statement of facts set out in the margin demonstrates.2
Recurringly, as here, the accused attempts to demonstrate his innocence of predisposition by highlighting the strength and malevolence of the inducements applied to *353him by the government — an attacking defense that puts the prosecution on trial. And, just as predictably, the government defends by attempting to show that the accused was not an innocent, had done such things before, and the like. Since the accused’s attack, as here,3 necessarily impugns both the methods employed by the government and its motives and actions — implicating innocents in contrived crimes — the government often seeks to show that the accused was not an innocent at all. And since its motives and tactics are attacked as well, it offers proof that its belief in the accused’s predisposition was a reasonable one. This seems to me a proper response to the attack of the accused, an attack which in the nature of things can scarcely avoid— and will seldom wish to — demeaning the government’s means and motives in setting the trap that caught him. Necessarily, such a response will often rest in large part on hearsay: the reports on which the government acted in deciding to provide the opportunity. And to ignore these evident realities is to exclude in advance, and without regard to the balancing test laid down for such occasions by Rule 403, evidence which may be of great relevance and probative force.
Logically, if the character of the government’s conduct is a proper issue in the case, then the motive with which it acted is an appropriate subject of proof. One form such proof may take is that of hearsay evidence going to the government’s state of mind in providing inducements to the accused, evidence offered not for the truth of the matter asserted in hearsay but to show the reasonableness of the government’s belief that it was dealing with an unwary criminal, not an unwary innocent.
As Judge Wisdom wrote for our court long ago:
Washington’s final complaint is that the court erred in permitting Robinson [a federal agent] to testify, over objections, that he had been told by several people that he could purchase narcotics from Washington. There is no merit in this contention. Once the defense of entrapment has been raised, it is proper to inquire into the reputation of the defendant to determine his predisposition to commit the offense or to inquire into the reasonableness of the officer’s conduct. Sherman v. United States, supra; Accardi v. United States, supra; Mitchell v. United States, 10 Cir., 1944, 143 F.2d 953. The trial judge properly instructed the jury to consider such testimony only for the limited purpose of determining if Robinson had good cause to believe that Washington was trafficking in narcotics.
Washington v. United States, 275 F.2d 687, 690 (5th Cir. 1960) (emphasis added).
If, as noted, the character of the government’s conduct remains a relevant consideration in the entrapment calculus, then these words are as correct today as they were when Judge Wisdom wrote them. Let us consider, then, whether it does.

Relevant Supreme Court Authority

In discussing this subject in the panel opinion, we wrote:
[I]t was not at the time we adopted our rule, nor has it ever been, the law that the focus in entrapment decisions is primarily on the character of the government conduct involved. The quality of that conduct has always been viewed by the high Court as a secondary consideration. As the Supreme Court teaches in Russell, supra at 428-32, 93 S.Ct. 1637, the notion that government conduct was the primary or sole consideration has from the first — since the Court recognized that defense in Sorrells v. United States, 287 U.S. 435, 53 S.Ct. 210, 77 L.Ed. 413 (1932) — been a minority view on the Court. Predisposition of the defendant is now and always has been the first consideration.
Nor is it necessarily so that with Russell predisposition, having once been a secondary consideration, became the sole one. The Russell Court’s opinion speaks of nonpredisposition as “the principal element in the defense,” id. 411 U.S. at 439, *35493 S.Ct. at 1643, which seems to imply that there are subsidiary ones. And elsewhere, the Russell Court hypothesizes government conduct so outrageous that it may constitute a defense. Id. at 431, 93 S.Ct. 1637. Our circuit’s authorities have long considered both the predisposition of the defendant and the character of the conduct of government agents to be material to the entrapment defense. Washington v. United States, 275 F.2d 687, 689 (5th Cir. 1960); Accardi v. United States, 257 F.2d 168, 172-73 (5th Cir. 1959). In the latter opinion cited, our panel “weighed carefully the conduct of the government agents,” correctly recognizing that in Sherman v. United States, 356 U.S. 369, 78 S.Ct. 819, 2 L.Ed.2d 848 (1958), Sorrells’ follow-on companion, “the language of the majority of the court, shows that they attach almost as much importance as the minority to the conduct of the government agents.” Accardi, supra at 173 (emphasis in original). And though the 1973 decision in Russell clearly requires us to give preeminence to the predisposition factor, neither it nor reason requires us to abandon all consideration of the character of police conduct in a given affair.
Surely it is possible that what Webster sought to show in this case — that he was an utter innocent, corrupted and seduced by the sexual favors of a government agent into selling back to the government cocaine supplied him by that agent at the government’s behest — might be seen as “outrageous” by some courts. And though we are not connoisseurs of the degrees of outrage, we are willing to hazard that the showing of an honest and well-founded belief by the government agents involved that Webster was no innocent at all, but rather a criminal who dealt routinely in large amounts of contraband drugs, would remove considerable of the blush from Webster’s entrapment-outrage rose. We therefore cannot say that the showing made here was irrelevant to the character of government conduct that constitutes an element of the entrapment defense. Nor do either logic or clear authority teach that, when the character of that conduct is attacked as it was here, it may not be defended by proof that it was motivated by a desire to trap the unwary criminal, not the unwary innocent. See Sherman v. United States, 356 U.S. 369, 372, 78 S.Ct. 819, 820, 2 L.Ed.2d 848 (1958).
United States v. Webster, 606 F.2d 581, 583-84 (5th Cir. 1979).
The Supreme Court has written nothing in the area since we handed down the above. If correct when written, it is therefore still so. The character of government conduct, certainly if “outrageous,” remains an issue, albeit a secondary one, in such prosecutions as Webster’s. The Supreme Court has not written it away. Neither should we. And in fact no court, however exalted, can write the thorns off roses or divide the indivisible. When an accused raises the entrapment defense, asserting his lack of predisposition and attacking the government’s means, its motives are perforce called in question. To deny to it a major mode of defending them seems to me unwise. Nor, as I shall attempt to show in the following, is it necessary.

Rule 403, Federal Rules of Evidence

It rests, of course, in the trial court’s broad discretion to admit or exclude evidence. Ordinarily, evidence relevant, competent, and material will be admitted. As the majority correctly notes, however, Rule 403 permits that court to exclude even relevant evidence on various grounds.4
The sort of evidence under examination, if offered in response to an attack on the government’s good faith, meets all three *355general criteria for admission.5 Rule 403 contemplates, however, that if in the judgment of the trial court its probative force is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, he may in his discretion exclude it. Though I can no more foresee than can the majority the myriad possible factual and evidentiary contexts in which these issues may arise, clearly there are likely to be many in which the district judge’s discretion should be exercised to exclude. I suspect there will be others where, in the exercise of that same discretion, the matter should have been admitted.
But no more. Instead, the new evidentiary rule — it is literally that — announced by the majority excludes such evidence “in almost all cases,” regardless of what the judge in the arena at those cases may conclude pursuant to Rule 403. Lacking such prescience, I would not do so.

. Like insanity, it usually figures as a defense of last resort, employed when all else is hopeless.

. The Defendant, ALBERT KEITH WEBSTER, met a government confidential informant known to the Defendant as “Susan Spears” at a massage parlor known either as the Port-O-Call or the Executive Massage Parlor. “Susan Spears,” not her true name, was a paid government informant who had received a total of $3,500.00 for “making a case” other than the case involving the Defendant. “Susan introduced the Defendant to Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Agent, Vincent J. Mazzilli at the Holiday Inn, right next to Calder Racetrack. The government confidential informant “Susan” after introducing the Defendant to Agent Mazzilli “was taking cocaine and stuff.”
The Defendant was alleged to have sold and delivered approximately 19 grams of cocaine to Agent Mazzilli for $1,050.00 on May 17, 1978. This was denied by Defendant.
The Defendant was further charged with possessing with intent to distribute, approximately 500 grams of cocaine and distribution of approximately 500 grams of cocaine (18 ounces) on May 22, 1978. The Defendant presented the defense of entrapment stating that the confidential informant “Susan” kept calling him asking him to help her “do a big deal with these guys, because I was big; and that I could make some money.” The Defendant continued to advise “Susan” that he was not interested but she kept calling him trying to talk him into making a delivery for her to these men and the Defendant finally agreed to assist her and the packet of cocaine was delivered to the Defendant by a friend of “Susan.” The Defendant further stated that the only reason he agreed to help “Susan” was because they had sexual relations “numerous times” and because “I thought she was my friend. I had taken her to the racetrack. I had gone to bed with her, and we’d been friends.”
In rebuttal to the entrapment defense the Government called DEA Agent Richard Fiano, who stated that in October of 1977 he had a conversation with an informant who advised Agent Fiano that he had previously purchased cocaine from an individual named Keith Webster who was described as “a large individual, about 260 lbs., male, white. That is it.”
Brief of appellant Webster to the panel, record references omitted.

. See note 2, supra.

. Rule 403. Exclusion of Relevant Evidence on Grounds of Prejudice, Confusion, or Waste of Time.
Although relevant, evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by considerations of undue delay, waste of time, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence.

. Such evidence should not, of course, be received unless the defendant has in some manner impugned the good faith of the government. Unless this subject has been raised by the defense, the issue of the government’s collective state of mind is irrelevant.