Court Opinion

ID: 9654004
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 18:01:28.764454+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:33.328714
License: Public Domain

SOPER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
The opinion of the court announces a rule of law contrary to that stated in its former decision in Newman v. United States (C. C. A.) 299 F. 128, 131, in which it was held that, under certain circumstances, entrapment of a defendant by government officials constitutes a valid defense. In that ease, Judge Woods said: “It is well settled that decoys may be used to entrap criminals, and to present opportunity to one intending or willing to commit crime. But decoys are not permissible to ensnare the innocent and law-abiding into the commission of crime. When the criminal design originates, not with the accused, but is conceived in the mind of the government officers, and the accused is by persuasion, deceitful representation, or inducement lured into the commission of a criminal act, the government is estopped by sound public policy from prosecution therefor. ‘The first duties of the officers of the law are to prevent, not to punish crime. It is not their duty to incite to and create crime for the sole purpose of prosecuting and punishing it.’ Butts v. United States (C. C. A.) 273 F. 35, 18 A. L. R. 143.”
Judge Sanborn’s comprehensive statement to the same effect in Butts v. United States, supra, has been widely quoted with approval; and the doctrine has been accepted in every federal circuit.1 The Supreme Court of the United States has had no occasion to say in any ease before it that the accused had been improperly entrapped. The facts in each instance have shown merely a purpose on the part of the government’s agents to ascer*979tain whether the defendant was engaged in an unlawful business, and not a design to induce or solicit the commission of a crime.2 It has been sufficient for the court to point out that the investigation's of the agents had been conducted in a proper manner, and no decision has been based on the theory now advanced that the defense cannot exist in any case, if all of the elements of a crime are present. In its most recent decision on the question, Casey v. United States, 276 U. S. 419, 48 S. Ct. 373, 72 L. Ed. 632, the court held that a defense of entrapment should be overruled, and a conviction for violation of the narcotic laws should be sustaim d, because the government officers, who got the evidence with the aid of a decoy, had probable cause to suspect that the defendant was a habitual violator, and did nothing to induce him to commit the crime beyond a simple request to furnish the drugs contrary to law. The Supreme Court has gone no farther than to hold, in harmony with the widely accepted rule, that entrapment is no defense when the officers of the government merely present an opportunity to a suspected person to violate the law.
It is of course true that no conduct on the part of the officers of the government can authorize or excuse a violation of the law. Nevertheless, it has been thought by the federal judiciary with striking unanimity that the government should, not be allowed to prosecute a man who has been transformed from a law-abiding citizen into a criminal by the activities of its agents. It is agreed that there is no place in our system of law for the idea that the government can do no wrong. Langford v. United States, 101 U. S. 311, 25 L. Ed. 1010. Such a prosecution is rarely undertaken, as those who have had experience in the federal courts well know; most frequently the defense of improper entrapment is merely a groundless excuse offered by those who would escape the penalty of their offenses. But when the defense is sustained by the proof, fair dealing demands that the prosecution shall fail.
We do not satisfy this ideal by an appeal to the doctrine that, in civil affairs, the government is not estopped by the unlaw ful acts or neglects of its agents. That rule is designed to relieve ihe government from responsibility for the unauthorized acts and delinquencies of persons in its employ. Judge Story, in a ease of laches, said that the rule was based, not upon the notion of extraordinary prerogative, hut upon, a great public policy. United States v. Kirkpatrick, 9 Wheat. 720, 735, 6 L. Ed. 199; United States v. Hoar, 2 Mason, 311, Fed. Cas. No. 15,373. See, also, Whiteside v. United States, 93 U. S. 247, 257, 23 L. Ed. 882. The manifold operations of the government can be conducted only through numerous agents. One who deals with them is obliged to take notice of the limitations upon their powers, and may not assert any claim or defense based upon either laches or neglect; for otherwise, the most serious losses to the public could not be avoided with the ulmosi vigilance. So understood, the doctrine seems to furnish little reason to permit the government to adopt and ratify conduct on the part of its agents, which no one undertakes to justify. It is likely enough that the rule of entrapment now generally accepted in olher federal circuits is an extension of the law-laid down in those eases like larceny, in which the consent of the injured party is inconsistent with the existence of the crime; but the development, illogical though it may have been, has taken place, and we should gain nothing if we should now retrace our steps. “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.” Holmes, The Common Law, 1.
The facts in the pending ease justify an application of the prevailing rule. Sorrells was regularly employed by the Champion Eibro Company at Canton, TST. C., and had not missed a pay day since March, 1924. On Sunday, July 13, 1930, a prohibition agent visited' Sorrells’ home in the country near the village of Clyde, N. C., in order to try to buy intoxicating liquors from him, and, if successful, to prosecute him for violation of the National Prohibition Law. The agent was accompanied by three young men, residents of the community. One of them in-irodueed him to Sorrells as a furniture dealer from Charlotte, on a vacation, who was desirous of procuring some good whisky. The agent asked Sorrells to got it; but he said that he did not have any whisky and that he did not fool with it. The agent and his associates nevertheless remained at the house for an hour and a half, and, during this interval, it transpired that Sorrells and the agent and one of the others had served in the same division of the American Army during the Great War. Their experiences in ihe war were discussed, and, during the conversation, the agent asked Sorrells three or *980four times to get some whisky, but each time was met with the same response as at first. The request was again renewed, and finally Sorrells said that he would go and see if he could get some. He left his home and was gone from twenty to thirty minutes, returning with a half gallon of whisky which he delivered to the agent in exchange for the sum of five dollars. There was evidence tending to show that Sorrells bore a good reputation in the community. To offset this testimony, the government called a number of witnesses in rebuttal who said that, for a considerable period prior to the sale, Sorrells had the general reputation of being a rum-runner, and that this reputation was known to the agent. The government also proved that Sorrells made a subsequent sale of intoxicating liquor on August 28, 1930, when solicited by the prohibition agent, and also that a search of the defendant’s premises two weeks later revealed eleven one-half gallon jars of whisky hidden in a thicket seventy-five yards from the defendant’s house, and a ten-gallon keg containing three and a half gallons.of wine secreted near his residence.
From this evidence, the jury might have found that the defendant had been an industrious law-abiding man, who had never violated the National Prohibition Law (27 USCA) prior to the sale charged in the indictment; and that he was overpersuaded on that occasion by the persistent requests of his former comrades in arms to leave his home and procure the liquor they desired. On the other hand, the jury might have concluded that the agent had reason to suspect that the defendant was a lawbreaker, and that the event proved this to be trué when once the defendant was convinced that he might safely do business with his visitors. The District Judge refused to submit the issue thus raised, and charged the jury that the evidence showed that the defendant was not induced or entrapped to sell the liquor, and that, if the jury believed that the sale was made, they should find a verdict of guilty. The defendant was convicted and sentenced to serve a term of eighteen months in the penitentiary. It was not a ease for peremptory instructions by the District Judge either way, if improper entrapment is a valid defense, for conflicting inferences might - reasonably have been drawn from the evidence, and a question of fact for the determination of the jury was presented. Chicago & N. W. Ry. Co. v. United States (C. C. A.) 234 F. 272; Western Union Tel. Co. v. Hall (C. C. A.) 287 F. 297.

 Grimm v. United States, 136 U. S. 604, 15 S. Ct. 470, 39 L. Ed. 550; Goode v. United States, 159 U. S. 667, 16 S. Ct. 136, 40 L. Ed. 297; Rosen v. United States, 161 U. S. 29, 16 S. Ct. 434, 40 L. Ed. 606; Andrews v. United States, 162 U. S. 420, 423, 16 S. Ct. 708, 40 L. Ed. 1023: Price v. United States, 165 U. S. 311, 17 S. Ct. 366, 41 L. Ed. 727.