U.S. v. Daniel, 92-5518

• Decision Date: 14 September 1993
• Docket Number: No. 92-5518,92-5518
• Citation: 3 F.3d 775
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. George C. DANIEL, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

Page 775

3 F.3d 775

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. George C. DANIEL, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 92-5518.

United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.

Argued July 15, 1993.

Decided Sept. 1, 1993.

Amended by Order Filed Sept. 14, 1993.

William Kevin Reynolds, Annapolis, MD, argued (Bruce C. Bereano, on brief), for defendant-appellant.

Harvey Ellis Eisenberg, Executive Asst. U.S. Atty., Baltimore, MD, argued (Gary P. Jordan, U.S. Atty., on brief), for plaintiff-appellee.

Before ERVIN, Chief Judge, and PHILLIPS and MURNAGHAN, Circuit Judges.

OPINION

PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge:

George Daniel appeals four convictions for unlawfully attempting to dispense or distribute controlled substances and the sentence accordingly imposed. Finding no reversible errors, we affirm the convictions and sentence, remanding however for correction of an administrative error in sentencing.

I

Alex Dower, a long-time drug abuser, alerted the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to his purchases of prescriptions for controlled substances from Dr. George C. Daniel after becoming annoyed with Daniel's refusal to extend his line of credit. The government then used Dower to set up a meeting of Daniel and Darren Wolpert, a DEA undercover agent who posed as Dower's brother Robert. At a meeting that formed the basis for Count One of Daniel's indictment, Wolpert and Dower met Daniel, who wrote a prescription for Percodan Wolpert requested within three minutes and without any physical examination. While Daniel initially expressed a desire to prescribe Tylenol III (also a controlled substance), he acquiesced immediately when Wolpert said he wanted Percodan. Wolpert paid off Dower's $275 debt to Daniel (this was the government's only payment to Dower) and gave Daniel an additional $75.

Ten days later Wolpert contacted Daniel directly. Within six minutes of meeting Daniel for the two transactions charged in Counts Two and Three of his indictment, Wolpert had acquired two more prescriptions he'd requested: Percodan for himself and Dilaudid for a person Daniel hadn't met, Bill McCallam (a.k.a. DEA Special Agent William Callahan). Again Wolpert wasn't examined. Wolpert paid Daniel $100 for each of the two prescriptions.

Wolpert and another undercover DEA agent, Angela Stone, met Daniel at his office a few days later to conduct the transactions charged in Counts Four through Seven of Daniel's indictment. By then confident that Daniel wouldn't examine him, Wolpert wore a recording device. In fifteen minutes Daniel sold Wolpert four requested prescriptions: Percodan for Robert Dower, Dilaudid for Bill McCallam (who still hadn't met Daniel), Demerol for Alex Dower (who wasn't present), and Dilaudid for Angela Steinhart (a.k.a. Agent Stone). Once again, Daniel conducted no exams and took no medical histories. Though he asked Stone about the nature of her medical problem, he seemed unconcerned when she replied simply that Dilaudid helped her feel better and she liked the way it made her feel. Wolpert reassured him that Stone was all right, that he'd "been with her for a while," and Daniel wrote the prescription. Wolpert paid Daniel $300 and Stone paid him $100. During the encounter, Daniel cautioned Wolpert and Stone to use different pharmacies to fill the various prescriptions and made other statements about avoiding DEA scrutiny.

Counts Eight through Eleven of Daniel's indictment arose from Daniel's recorded encounter twenty-two days later with Agent Callahan. Acting alone, Callahan purchased four prescriptions for $400 in twelve minutes, without medical attention of any kind, for Bill McCallam, Robert Dower, Ernie Staples, and Jerry Campbell. Daniel had never met the imaginary Staples and Campbell. He warned Callahan to fill the prescriptions at different pharmacies.

In 1987 Daniel was indicted by a federal grand jury in the District of Maryland on eleven counts of unlawfully attempting to dispense controlled substances. 21 U.S.C. Secs. 841(a)(1), 846. After agreeing to plead guilty to one of those counts, Daniel became a fugitive from justice until his arrest three and a half years and thirty-one countries later in Hawaii. In May, 1992 he was tried to a jury in the District of Maryland, which found him guilty on Counts Five, Six, Seven, and Ten, but acquitted him on Counts One and Two and hung on Counts Three, Four, Eight, Nine, and Eleven. The district court declared a mistrial on the hung counts and the United States dismissed them with leave of the court.

The district court then sentenced Daniel to concurrent 52 month sentences on each count. The sentences are pre-Guidelines and Daniel will be eligible for parole.

Daniel appealed, pressing a number of claimed errors. In essence, he (1) challenges the sufficiency of his indictment, (2) alleges that he was unlawfully entrapped and wrongfully prevented from arguing that to the jury, (3) contends that his counsel was constitutionally ineffective, and (4) notes a number of objections to his sentencing. In Parts II through V of the opinion we address this multitude of claims, taking them in the order noted above.

II

Daniel unsuccessfully challenged his indictment below and renews that challenge here. Each count of his indictment charged that

George C. Daniel, M.D. [,] being a registrant authorized to dispense controlled substances for legitimate medical purposes, did knowingly and intentionally unlawfully attempt to dispense or distribute a quantity of a Schedule II Controlled Substance ...; said attempt not being for a legitimate medical purpose.

Daniel contends that this charge failed to include certain essential elements of the relevant offense, a violation of 21 U.S.C. Sec. 841(a)(1), and was thus fatally flawed. The elements claimed to be missing are (1) action outside the usual course of medical practice, (2) action not in good faith and proper accordance with a standard of medical practice generally recognized and accepted in the United States, and (3) action by a practicing physician. For the reasons below, we find the indictment sufficient.

Daniel was charged under the relevant attempt statute, 21 U.S.C. Sec. 846, for attempts to commit the substantive offense proscribed by 21 U.S.C. Sec. 841(a)(1):

Except as authorized by this subchapter, it shall be unlawful for any person knowingly or intentionally to ... distribute[ ] or dispense[ ] a controlled substance ...

Section 822(b) of the relevant subchapter authorizes distribution and dispensation by registrants like Daniel "to the extent authorized by their registration and in conformity with the other provisions of this subchapter." In United States v. Moore, 423 U.S. 122, 140, 96 S.Ct. 335, 344, 46 L.Ed.2d 333 (1975), the Supreme Court limited this authority to distributions and dispensations in the lawful course of approved professional practice.

As we interpret the statute, its elements are (1) a knowing or intentional attempt to distribute or dispense (2) a substance known to be controlled (3) in a way not authorized by this subchapter. All Daniel's complaints relate to the third element recited. With respect to physicians, demonstrating that element requires proof that the charged conduct falls outside the boundaries of the registrant's professional practice. Moore, 423 U.S. at 140, 96 S.Ct. at 344. The indictment's allegations that the attempted distributions or dispensations were "not ... for a legitimate medical purpose" satisfy that requirement. No more is necessary. The first two of Daniel's "missing elements" simply repeat this requirement in other, less concise, terms. The third, that Daniel was a physician, need not be proven by the government. On the contrary, it is the source of the requirement that the government show a lack of legitimate medical purpose at all. Accordingly, we find the indictment sufficient.

III

In addition to challenging his indictment, Daniel claims he was entrapped. The district court rejected this defense and refused to instruct the jury on entrapment, concluding that Daniel hadn't met his burden of production on the issue. Daniel argues he met that burden and, moreover, was entitled to a judgment of acquittal on all counts because the government failed to present sufficient evidence from which the jury could conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that he was predisposed to commit the crimes charged. At the very least, he contends, the jury should have been instructed on and permitted to consider his entrapment defense. We disagree and conclude, as did the district court, that Daniel failed to meet his burden of production on this issue.

A

An entrapment defense has two elements: government inducement and lack of predisposition to commit the crime on the defendant's part. Mathews v. United States, 485 U.S. 58, 62-63, 108 S.Ct. 883, 886-887, 99 L.Ed.2d 54 (1988). To raise this affirmative defense a defendant must produce more than a scintilla of evidence that the government induced him to commit the charged offense. United States v. Perl, 584 F.2d 1316, 1321 (4th Cir.1978), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 1130, 99 S.Ct. 1050, 59 L.Ed.2d 92 (1979).

Daniel didn't do that. We see no inducement in the conduct of the government agents here. "Inducement" is a term of art: it involves elements of governmental overreaching and conduct sufficiently excessive to implant a criminal design in the mind of an otherwise innocent party. See Jacobson v. United States, --- U.S. ----, ----, 112 S.Ct. 1535, 1540, 118 L.Ed.2d 174 (1992). Solicitation, by contrast, is the provision of an opportunity to commit a criminal act. See id. The agents' transactions with Daniel involved only the latter.

Daniel cites the government's failure to investigate Alex Dower and Agent Wolpert's "admission" that he induced Daniel to commit the initial offense as evidence of governmental overreaching and excessive conduct, but we are unpersuaded. The government's investigation of Daniel was thoroughly professional,...