Court Opinion

ID: 9445133
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:20:24.821572+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:08.112889
License: Public Domain

CAMERON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
My dissent extends to the portion of the opinion written by Judge RIVES and requires these additional observations. The rejection of the lower Court’s charge by the majority results, in my opinion, from the attempt to isolate the refused instruction and focus undivided attention upon it, ignoring the residue of the Court’s charge. This is, of course, not permissible:
“In examining the charge of the Court for the purpose of ascertaining its correctness in point of law, the whole scope and bearing of it must be taken together. It is wholly inadmissible to take up single and detached passages, and to decide upon them without attending to the context, or without incorporating such qualifications and explanations as naturally flow from other parts of the instructions.”1
Nor should a criminal appeal be turned into a quest for error such as it is likely to be if a refused instruction is segregated and magnified out of all proportion to its true relation to the charge as a whole and its importance in connection with the evidence actually before the court and jury. A charge, perfect in every word and sentence standing alone, probably has never been given. Every word and sentence should be given a common sense interpretation in their relationship to the entire charge and to the issues of the case and the evidence adduced to support them. Viewed against the entire charge given, it is impossible for me to conceive that the jury found itself laboring under the confusion which seems to disturb the majority.
Its repudiation of the action of the Court below, in my judgment, comes within the condemnation of the language of this Court in Patterson v. United States, 5 Cir., 1951, 192 F.2d 631, 633:
“As to the claimed errors in the charge, we are convinced that, except perhaps from the strained and hypercritical point of view once obtaining in the review of criminal cases but now no longer possible in federal courts, the action of the trial court in giving and refusing charges, was unexceptionable. We are convinced, too, from a consideration of the charge as a whole, rather than from a view alone of isolated portions of it, that appellant was afforded a fair trial with full opportunity to defend himself.”
Particularly is this statement true when the facts are considered upon which the defense of entrapment was based. It must be remembered that appellant made four deliveries of marihuana in quick succession, and that, after the first delivery, at least (as to which the prosecution was dismissed), he knew he was participating in the sale of marihuana in violation of law. The temptations placed before him, consisting of small sums of money, were not “extraordinary temptations or inducements” such as we held to be an essential ingredient of entrapment in the Hamilton case.2 But the majority intimates that any money inducement was likely to cause appellant to succumb because of his “impecunious condition”.
In that connection it is proper to consider that appellant had, before the trial *280in the Court below on charges involving an aggregate of 3,155 grains of marihuana, been found guilty by a jury of obtaining 2,047 grains of marihuana within two weeks of the transfers here involved.3 In the handling of these two cases before this Court, appellant had availed himself of the services of two Chicago attorneys who are, as is manifest from the technical skills employed,4 experts in the handling of such cases,—■ whose services obviously would not be available to one suffering from the impecuniosity attributed to this appellant by the majority.5
It is proper that we take note of the fact that, while this appellant is at large and free to ply the trade two juries have found him guilty of participation in, this insidious business is increasing by leaps and bounds. This Court cannot function as in a vacuum, but must perform its duties as a part of the swift moving stream of life and in recognition of things as they are. Within ten years narcotic arrests of persons under twenty-one years of age in one of the large states of the Union have increased 2300 percent.6
That is a situation known to us, with respect to which we are not permitted to be blind, and concerning which we cannot fail to bear responsibility. In my opinion, those hapless victims are entitled to a share of our solicitude.

. Spring Co. v. Edgar, 1878, 99 U.S. 645, 659, 25 L.Ed. 487. And see Boyd v. United States, 271 U.S. 104, 107, 46 S.Ct. 442, 70 L.Ed. 857.

. 221 F.2d at page 614.

; See Shurman v. United States, 5 Cir., 1955, 219 F.2d 282.

. And see Lott v. United States, 5 Cir., 230 F.2d 915.

. Moreover, appellant has followed the expedient of printing the record and brief instead of following the less expensive methods available under the rules of this Court.

. Since this ease was argued before us the Governor of New York, on Feb. 17, 1956, sent to the legislature of that state a special message containing these words:
“Among the many consequences of the tension and unrest of the post war world none is more intrinsically terrible than the steady rise of drug addiction among the youth of our nation. Four years ago your Honorable Bodies took action to increase the penalties for the illegal sale or possession of narcotic drugs, since then our police have acted with vigor and our schools and churches have spoken out with growing urgency and alarm. And yet in spite of these efforts the drug traffic has continued to spread, the number of addicts has continued to grow. Narcotic arrests in New York City alone have risen 600 percent in the past decade; arrests of persons under twenty-one have increased 2300 percent.
“There can be no reasonable doubt as to why our efforts have failed: they have failed because we have not stopped the smuggling of drugs into our country, because we have not hit hard enough at the drug peddlers, and because we have no+ developed a dependable cure for drug addiction.” ■ ...