Court Opinion

ID: 9845515
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:23:33.101877+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:16:12.161368
License: Public Domain

Neely, Justice,

dissenting:

I dissent upon the grounds that the question of entrapment in this case was exclusively for the jury. W.Va. Code, 60A-4-401(a)(l)(ii) makes it a felony to possess marijuana with intent to deliver. There is no question that the defendant possessed marijuana, which he had hidden in a green garbage bag. Furthermore, the marijuana was broken down into eleven small, plastic bags for convenient sale, and the quantity possessed was sufficiently large that the quantity alone was evidence of intent to deliver. State v. Frisby, _W.Va. _, _ S.E.2d_, (decided June 20, 1978) The price certainly did not reflect an accommodation sale; it was $20 which bespeaks a profit-making motive. Consequently, there was sufficient evidence for the jury to conclude that the defendant was in the drug selling business, and possessed the marijuana with intent to deliver it.
Either the possession of marijuana with intent to deliver it is illegal or such possession is not. If possesion for sale is illegal, it is not for this Court to gainsay the criminal legislation by releasing young adults, regardless of how sympathetic their cases, merely because we wish that they had not committed an illegal act. Entrapment is about law, not about persons. The facts of this case do not demonstrate entrapment as a matter of law. How else are the police to catch drug pushers? Do we *769really believe that pushers will turn themselves in or deliberately seek out police officers in uniform to solicit sales. Nonsense! This officer was doing his job properly; he saw a potential drug seller and presented himself as an ardent customer in order to ferret out illicit drug selling. Now he is the criminal because he took the State’s salary and actually caught a law violator. One day maybe we will be able to put all the police in prison, instead only of putting their efforts to naught.
I am authorized to say that Chief Justice Caplan joins me in this dissent.