Court Opinion

ID: 9461294
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:10:47.534658+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:59.285350
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I would have this Circuit adopt the Fifth Circuit rule that entrapment is established as a matter of law to a charge of possessing contraband or distributing contraband to a government agent, where such contraband was supplied to the defendant by a government agent, including a paid informer. See United States v. Oquendo, 490 F.2d 161, 162-164 (5th Cir. 1974); United States *837v. Bueno, 447 F.2d 903 (5th Cir. 1971). Since the government here came forward with sufficient evidence contradicting the defendant’s allegations, the jury-ought to have been instructed that it must find beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not obtain the contraband from the government agent. Accordingly, I would reverse and remand for a new trial.
I cannot agree with the majority that the Supreme Court’s opinion in United States v. Russell, 411 U.S. 423, 93 S.Ct. 1637, 36 L.Ed.2d 366 (1973), “forecloses us from considering any theory other than predisposition.” For that case explicitly acknowledged that there may be cases where government conduct is “so outrageous that due process principles would absolutely bar the government from invoking judicial processes to obtain a conviction.” Id. at 431-432, 93 S.Ct. at 1643. Predisposition is emphatically not a bar to the invocation of this due process defense.
On the contrary, I agree with the Fifth Circuit that the Bueno rule survives Russell because that rule is aimed precisely at the outrageous situation where
* * * the government buy[s] heroin from itself, through an intermediary, the defendant, and then charg[es] him with the crime. * * *
United States v. Bueno, supra, 447 F.2d at 905.
To hold, as the majority seems to say, that Russell emasculated Bueno, is to overlook the fact that the Russell Court specifically noted that the facts in Russell did not fall within the Bueno rationale because the chemical supplied to defendant Russell was not itself' contraband. United States v. Russell, supra, 411 U.S. at 432, 93 S.Ct. 1637.
Not even the Supreme Court has focused so rigidly and exclusively on predisposition as this Court does today. In the future, it is difficult to see how any defendant in this Circuit can possibly raise the due process defense which the Russell Court sought to leave open. I respectfully dissent.