Court Opinion

ID: 9681154
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 07:44:37.697336+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:39:21.162481
License: Public Domain

John I. Purtle, Justice, dissenting. This court ought not voluntarily and knowingly refuse to adhere to the decisions of the United States Supreme Court. In a quite similar case, Mathews v. United States, 485 U.S. 58 (1988), the United States Supreme Court held: [E]ven if the defendant denies one or more elements of the crime, he is entitled to an entrapment instruction whenever there is sufficient evidence from which a reasonable jury could find entrapment. While Mathews concerns the construction of federal criminal procedure rules, and our prior decisions dealing with entrapment concern the Arkansas criminal procedure rules and statutes, the fundamental issue remains the same. In Arkansas, entrapment is an affirmative defense which must be proven by the accused. Our cases hold that, in order to present the defense of entrapment, the defendant must admit that he committed the criminal act charged. In light of the implications of Mathews, I am of the opinion that a constitutional question of due process of law is presented in the present case. Law enforcement officers ought not to be paid to go about actively encouraging people to commit crimes. That, unfortunately, is exactly what happens in entrapment cases. Entrapment by law-enforcement officials is a cancerous growth which is spreading rapidly in this country. Instead of trying to prevent crimes, some officers are paid to induce people to commit crimes under the theory that it is not entrapment to lead them to commit crimes if they were predisposed to do so. Naturally, one must conclude that, had a police officer not led an individual down the primrose path, no offense would have been committed. For a general discussion of my views on entrapment, see McCaslin v. State, 298 Ark. at 340, 767 S.W.2d at 309 (1989) (Purtle, J., dissenting) and State v. White, 298 Ark. at 169, 765 S.W.2d at 953 (1989) (Purtle, J., dissenting). I am still firmly of the opinion that police officers ought to be used to prevent crimes rather than to induce the commission of crimes. Entrapment is an affirmative defense. Ark. Code Ann. §5-2-209(a) (1987). In paragraph (b), entrapment is said to occur “when a law enforcement officer or any person acting in cooperation with him, induces the commission of an offense by using persuasion or other means likely to cause normally law-abiding persons to commit the offense.” Until this offense was allegedly committed, there was no record or indication that the appellant had ever violated any law. That certainly constitutes substantial evidence that he was a law-abiding person. The “undercover” agent in this case admitted that “the crime is not committed until it’s solicited by me.” According to the agent’s own testimony, after she initiated a conversation with the appellant, they went out to the parking lot where she found in the glove compartment of the appellant’s car a baggie containing about’one-tenth of an ounce of marijuana weighing approximately 4.8. grams. This amount was certainly far less than that required to create a presumption of possession with intent to deliver. This “undercover” agent induced the appellant to go with her to the parking lot and persuaded him to sell her about one-tenth of an ounce of marijuana for $10.00. For his yielding to temptation, he was sentenced to ten years and fined $25,000. The tone of this proceeding was set in the information when it charged Dale Eugene Morris, “a/k/a Joe Dale Morris,” with the crime of delivery of a controlled substance. This usage creates the impression that the appellant was employing an alias, leading to the logical conclusion that it was for the purpose of evading the law. However, the facts reveal that the appellant had never been in any trouble before and had not, in fact, used two different names. The “undercover” agent simply had supplied the two names from her notes. The state’s tactics aimed at damning the appellant’s character were further refined when the state brought forth information regarding the appellant’s subsequent charges of DWI during the cross-examination of a character witness. More will be said about this tactic later. In Mathews v. United States, supra, the accused denied that he had participated in the act forming the basis for the criminal charge he was facing. The trial court denied the motion to give an entrapment instruction or to allow such a defense. The District Court denied the appellant the defense of entrapment because he refused to admit the elements of the crime charged. The United States Supreme Court, by Chief Justice Rehnquist, reversed and held that “even if the defendant denies one or more elements of the crime, he is entitled to an entrapment instruction whenever there is sufficient evidence from which a reasonable jury could find entrapment.” In the present case, the state presented evidence from which the jury would have found that the crime was a result of entrapment. Certainly, under such circumstances, the appellant should not have been denied the instruction. It seems to me that fundamental fairness and basic principles of criminal justice require that the accused be allowed to have an instruction given on a matter which has arisen during the course of the trial. This is so even though the accused may have relied upon another defense. I return to the issue of the appellant being asked about subsequent criminal acts on cross-examination. This maneuver seems to have been planned by the state as part of its effort to portray the appellant in the worst possible light. The appellant’s character witness was asked if the appellant was of good moral character; he replied that he did not know of the appellant “being in any trouble.” However, it was the prosecutor who asked the witness if he had made the statement, “I never heard of him being in trouble.” Thus, the stage was set to ask the next question: “You haven’t heard about his DWIs?” Apparently, the appellant had been charged with two offenses of DWI after he was accused of having sold the one-tenth ounce of marijuana. The state’s conduct appears to be a clear violation of the long-standing “bad character” rule set forth in Alford v. State, 223 Ark. 330, 266 S.W.2d 804 (1954). Further, the state’s resort to this strategem is a manifest violation of Rule 404(b) of the Arkansas Rules of Evidence, which provides: Evidence of other crimes, wrongs, or acts is not admissible to prove the character of a person in order to show that he acted in conformity therewith. It may, however, be admissible of other purposes, such as proof of motive, opportunity, intent, preparation, plan, knowledge, identity, or absence of mistake or accident. Unrelated offenses or acts of misconduct are not relevant or admissible in an independent criminal trial. To allow such evidence would be to countenance a blow “to the very heart of fairness and justice in criminal trials.” Alford v. State, supra. Independent acts are, of course, sometimes admissible for purposes such as proof of motive, intent, plan, and mistake or accident, as contemplated by Rule 404(b). No argument has been made that the DWIs were related in any way to the modus operandi of the appellant. Clearly, the sole purpose of the state in introducing evidence of these acts was to show that the appellant, because of his bad character in other respects, was guilty of the crime for which he was being tried. A number of cases treat similar instances of guilt, so to speak, by association. Set Henderson v. State, 291 Ark. 138, 722 S.W.2d 842 (1987); Lackey v. State, 283 Ark. 150, 671 S.W.2d 757 (1984); Rios v. State, 262 Ark. 407, 557 S.W.2d 198 (1977). I cannot agree with the state’s argument that the appellant’s counsel opened the door to the character questions concerning other “bad acts.” a trial should never be conceived as a contest between the attorneys; rather, it should strive toward discerning the truth and obtaining justice. The case should be reversed and remanded for a new trial because the state introduced irrelevant independent “bad acts” to show that the appellant was guilty of the crime charged, and because the trial court refused to give an instruction on entrapment. I cannot fault the trial court on the refusal to give the instruction because he was merely following precedent. We could, however, at least issue a caveat that such instructions may be proper even when the affirmative defense of entrapment has not been raised prior to trial.