Court Opinion

ID: 9452927
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:57:17.932396+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:25.609748
License: Public Domain

ELY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
I respectfully dissent. The district judge, in line with the offense which was charged, properly instructed the jury that it was required to determine, as a requisite for conviction, “that the defendant knew that the marijuana had been imported or brought into the United States contrary to law.”
The Government had been informed that the importation would occur in the Mercury automobile, specifically identified. Its agent actually observed the transportation across the international frontier. He saw the driver of the vehicle in which the contraband was concealed. That driver was not the appellant,1 and his identity was either known to the Government or might, by it, have been easily ascertained. The prosecution refused the request of the accused that he be supplied with the name of the informer, and I do not now question the refusal of the district judge to require the requested revelation. I do, however, because of the circumstances which I have outlined, challenge the propriety of authorizing the jury to infer, from the fact of the accused’s subsequent possession of the contraband, that the accused “knew that the marijuana had been imported into the United States, illegally, contrary to law.” 2
The prosecution should have been required to prove, at the very least, that *863the Government itself did not, through one of its own agents, accomplish the importation. If the Government itself imported the marijuana, it is indeed anomalous that it is now permitted to say that the accused “knew” that the substance had been imported “illegally, contrary to law.” Believing it to have been erroneous to instruct the jury as to the presumption in the light of the peculiar facts of this case and the lack of proof in the particular which I, in the circumstances, would require, I would reverse.3

. In Klepper v. United States, 331 F.2d 694 (9th Cir. 1964), emphasized by the majority, border police observed the automobile in which contraband was concealed as it crossed the border. The vehicle was being driven at that time by an identified friend of the accused, and the accused was observed as a passenger.

. When the accused objected to the instruction, it appears that the Government attorney himself questioned its applicability. Said he, “What I am saying is that since we have direct evidence of the smuggling by the person who drove it in, I don’t see any need to use the statutory presumption to prove that it was imported.”

. I cannot see that the majority attempts to answer the question which troubles me. Significantly, it does not mention the two cases upon which the Government, in its brief, relies. These are Haynes v. United States, 319 F.2d 620 (5th Cir. 1963), cert, denied, 375 U.S. 885, 84 S.Ct. 161, 11 L.Ed.2d 115 (1963), and Miller v. United States, 273 F.2d 279 (5th Cir. 1960), cert, denied, 362 U:S. 928, 80 S. Ct. 756, 4 L.Ed.2d 747 (1960). Neither is in point.
Compare United States v. Taylor, 266 F.2d 310 (7th Cir. 1959), cert, denied, 361 U.S. 853, 80 S.Ct. 96, 4 L.Ed.2d 92 (1959), wherein Government agents, informers, did not transport the contraband until it had already been imported into the United States.