Court Opinion

ID: 9479896
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:31:50.704369+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:20.821999
License: Public Domain

FAGG, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
The panel has declared war on the government’s power to initiate undercover investigations. Thus, I dissent.
I take issue with the panel’s disinclination to apply the controlling standard of review. This court reviews the government’s involvement in undercover investigations under due process principles. United States v. Irving, 827 F.2d 390, 393 (8th Cir.1987) (per curiam). The same is true of other courts of appeals. See United States v. Luttrell, 889 F.2d 806, 812-13 (9th Cir. 1989) (suspicionless undercover investigations offend due process); United States v. Driscoll, 852 F.2d 84, 87 (3d Cir.1988) (due process does not require probable cause for an undercover investigation); United States v. Jenrette, 744 F.2d 817, 823-24 & n. 13 (D.C.Cir.1984), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1099, 105 S.Ct. 2321, 85 L.Ed.2d 840 (1985) (due process does not require reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing for an undercover investigation); United States v. Gamble, 737 F.2d 853, 856-60 (10th Cir. 1984) (same); United States v. Myers, 635 F.2d 932, 941 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 956, 101 S.Ct. 364, 66 L.Ed.2d 221 (1980) (same).
Instead of deciding whether the government’s conduct in formulating, implementing, and enmeshing Jacobson in the investigatory scheme was fundamentally unfair, Irving, 827 F.2d at 393, the panel has barred the government from obtaining a conviction because the undercover investigation was initiated without “reasonable suspicion based on articulable facts” that Jacobson had committed or was likely to commit a similar crime, ante at 999, 1000. This bar applies even when the overall character of the government’s investigation “does not give rise to a claim of out-rageousness.” Id. at 1002. In my view, due process does not require an objectively quantified suspicion that approaches the threshold of probable cause. See Garionis v. Newton, 827 F.2d 306, 309 (8th Cir.1987). I believe the government can act on legitimately grounded suspicions without depriving the suspected person of any right secured by the constitution. The panel’s demand for particularized suspicion runs against the grain “of the post-Hampton cases decided by the courts of appeals [holding] that due process grants wide leeway to law enforcement agents in their investigation of crime.” United States v. Kaminski, 703 F.2d 1004, 1009 (7th Cir. *10031983); see also Hampton v. United States, 425 U.S. 484, 495 n. 7, 96 S.Ct. 1646, 1653 n. 7, 48 L.Ed.2d 113 (1976) (Powell, J., concurring).
In my opinion, the panel has borrowed from the rule of probable cause to arrest, Garionis, 827 F.2d at 309, and from the rule of particularized suspicion that governs brief investigatory detentions, Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 16-19, 21, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 1877-1878, 1879, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), for the singular purpose of narrowing the government’s power to initiate undercover investigations. Needless to say, law enforcement decisions to conduct undercover investigations are not controlled by fourth amendment doctrine. Furthermore, the terminology that functions as the backbone of the panel’s rule “[is] not self-defining [and the terminology] fall[s] short of providing clear guidance dispositive of the myriad factual situations that arise” when the government invokes its investigative powers to penetrate the shadowy world of crime. See United States v. Cortez, 449 U.S. 411, 417, 101 S.Ct. 690, 694, 66 L.Ed.2d 621 (1981). At bottom, the panel’s rulemaking runs squarely into “the difficulties attending the notion that due process of law can be embodied in fixed rules.” United States v. Russell, 411 U.S. 423, 431, 93 S.Ct. 1637, 1642, 36 L.Ed.2d 366 (1973).
If the panel believes the government has violated due process by embarking on a suspicionless investigation against Jacobson, it should say so. Luttrell, 889 F.2d at 813. The record, however, does not support that conclusion. Indeed, on the record presented here the government’s undercover investigation fits within the terms of the very rule the panel proposes.
The government possessed well-grounded reasons to believe that an investigation aimed at Jacobson would uncover criminal behavior. Id. at 814. Jacobson’s name was found in the customer records of a reputed child pornographer. This discovery identified Jacobson as a person who had previously ordered child erotica through the mails. The customer records also disclosed that Jacobson had obtained a brochure outlining the methods of purchasing child pornography. With this information in the hands of experienced postal inspectors, I am at a loss to understand how the panel finds room to “criticize the government for reasonably pursuing available leads” concerning Jacobson’s appetite for sexually explicit portrayals of children. United States v. Hunt, 749 F.2d 1078, 1087 (4th Cir.1984), cert. denied, 472 U.S. 1018 (1985). The panel concedes that Jacobson’s response to a survey mailed to him by the postal inspectors “indicated a predisposition to receive through the mails sexually explicit materials depicting children," ante at 1000, and “justified] the decision to offer Jacobson the opportunity to purchase illegal materials through the mail,” id. at 1001.
It seems to me the panel is wearing blinders. This is not a case where the government was in the business of generating new crimes merely for the sake of pressing criminal charges against an individual who was “scrupulously conforming to the requirements of the law.” Luttrell, 889 F.2d at 813. Jacobson was not targeted in advance. To the contrary, the government had a significant amount of knowledge about Jacobson’s shadowy activities, and he was targeted for investigation because of his own voluntary conduct.
What the panel has chosen to ignore in this case is the practical reality that the investigatory process does not deal with hard certainties. Law enforcement officers are entitled to draw inferences, make deductions, and arrive at common sense conclusions about human behavior based on available information and the behavioral patterns of law breakers. See Cortez, 449 U.S. at 418-19, 101 S.Ct. at 695-96. The accumulated information must be “seen and weighed not in terms of [judicial post mortems], but as understood by those versed in the field of law enforcement.” Id. at 418, 101 S.Ct. at 695. When the whole picture known to the postal inspectors is viewed in this context, the officers clearly possessed legitimate grounds for their suspicion of Jacobson and for their belief that an undercover approachment of Jacobson would reveal criminal activity. *1004Id. at 419, 101 S.Ct. at 695. “Here, fact on fact and clue on clue afforded a basis for the deductions and inferences that brought the officers to focus on [Jacobson].” Id. Simply stated, the panel is unwilling to acknowledge that it is looking at reasonable police work. Id.
Although the normal constitutional and statutory protections of criminal process have always been available to Jacobson, he necessarily wages his legal battle against the government’s decision to investigate him as a question of law because the jury has rejected his entrapment defense. This court “may someday be presented with a situation in which the conduct of law enforcement agents [in initiating an undercover investigation] is so outrageous that due process principles would absolutely bar the government from invoking judicial processes to obtain a conviction, [but Jacobson’s case] is distinctly not of that breed.” Russell, 411 U.S. at 431-32, 93 S.Ct. at 1643. I thus dissent from the panel’s decision to overturn Jacobson’s conviction.