Court Opinion

ID: 9445132
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:20:24.816947+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:08.111332
License: Public Domain

RIVES, Circuit Judge.
Judge TUTTLE and I are constrained to vote for reversal because of the court’s prejudicial comments regarding appellant’s basic defense of entrapment. We agree that no prejudicial error resulted from the court’s failure to instruct as to the statutory definition of marihuana, in accordance with this Court’s decision in Shurman v. United States, 5 Cir., 219 F.2d 282, and from its further refusal to charge as to any adverse inference which might be drawn from the Government’s failure to produce Cobble to testify at the trial. We agree further that the remarks of.the court, [footnote (6), Judge CAMERON’S opinion], both before and after reading the appellant’s requested charge, “tended to neutralize that charge” and render it “sterile and nugatory.” Upon this record, however, we are of the firm opinion that such remarks were also positively erroneous under our decision in Hamilton v. United States, 5 Cir., 221 F.2d 611, and we cannot agree with the conclusion that “no harm resulted because the charges already given amply covered the subject.”
The court’s initial charges on the entrapment defense, except for the quoted definition, were obviously misleading and inaccurate, for the original charge [footnote (7), Judge CAMERON’S opinion] was premised on the wholly inapplicable theory of inducement by “false and fraudulent representations,” an issue admittedly not in this case; and the requested instruction previously given was predicated purely on a defensive “transfer by agency” theory, obviously not pertinent to the applicable defense of entrapment by money inducement. [Footnote (8), Judge CAMERON’S opinion]. But even accepting the debatable assumption that these initial charges of the court “fairly and fully” instructed the jury on appellant’s main defense of entrapment by inducement of money reward, we cannot reconcile the conclusion that the error in the court’s conflicting and equivocal, supplemental instruction11 was harmless with the universally accepted rule that “a conviction ought not to rest on an equivocal direction to the jury on a basic issue”, Bollenbach v. United States, 326 U.S. 607, 613, 66 S.Ct. 402, 405, 90 L.Ed. 350; Hamilton v. United States, supra, 221 F.2d at page 615; for, with personal liberty at stake, we are not authorized to speculate from conflicting instructions as to whether the jury followed the correct or the erroneous portion of the supplemental charge. Cf. Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750, 763-765, 66 S.Ct. 1239, 90 L.Ed. 1557.
 Appellant’s defense of entrapment inducing each of the marihuana transfers, the whole scheme originating with Cobble with appellant’s participation prompted by his impecunious circumstances and his concern for his pregnant wife, was not only the basic issue in the case, but was his only defense of any merit or substance. Appellant’s testimony was sufficient to create a jury issue on his basic defense of entrapment, and the issue of whether his testimony was “unreasonable” was primarily for the jury to resolve upon correct instructions from the court.
In our view, appellant was severely prejudiced in his only real defense by the trial court’s inadvertent adherence to its own misconception of the law applicable to entrapment induced by a money consideration. See Hamilton v. United States, supra.12 In view of the frequent*279ly reiterated admonition that it is not our province to pass upon guilt or innocence, but only to review errors of law, it is impossible for us, upon this record, to conclude with any degree of assurance that the jury was not unfairly swayed in its finding of guilt by the court’s partially erroneous supplemental instructions. Kotteakos case, supra.

. Of course, we cannot accept the com-ments in footnote (10) of Judge CAMERON’S opinion as justifying the district court’s remarks, especially in view of our' reversal of the same district court for a strikingly .similar statement in Hamilton v. United States, 5 Cir., 221 F.2d 611, 613-614.

. The eminent trial court apparently did not have an opportunity to reconsider its supplemental instruction in the light of this Court’s decision in the Hamilton case, supra, for counsel for the Government upon oral argument conceded that, at the time of the trial, he was unfamiliar with that decision, and the record does *279not reveal that counsel for appellant called the court’s attention to the obvious conflict between the court’s remarks and the rule there set forth.