State v. Brown

• Decision Date: 31 January 1972
• Citation: 287 A.2d 400
• Parties: STATE of Delaware v. Diane Johnson BROWN.
• Court: Delaware Superior Court

Page 400

287 A.2d 400

STATE of Delaware v. Diane Johnson BROWN.

Superior Court of Delaware, New Castle County.

Jan. 31, 1972.

Opinion and order on defendant's motion for acquittal or new trial; motion denied.

Joseph A. Hurley, Deputy Atty. Gen., Wilmington, for plaintiff.

Henry A. Wise, Jr., Wilmington, for defendant.

QUILLEN, Judge.

The defendant, Diane Johnson Brown, was found guilty by a jury of two counts of sale of marijuana. The defense has filed a 'Motion for Verdict of Acquittal Notwithstanding the Verdict of the Jury or, in the Alternative, a New Trial'. The defendant claims she was entitled to a directed verdict of acquittal because of entrapment and further that the charge to the jury placing the burden on the defendant on entrapment by a preponderance of the evidence was plain error requiring a new trial even in the absence of an exception.

The question of entrapment was a factual one and properly submitted to the jury. A jury may find predisposition from the circumstances surrounding the sale itself if the offer to buy is not accompanied by unusual persuasion. If any error was made, it was in the defendant's favor in submitting the entrapment question to the jury at all.

The instruction placing the burden on entrapment, an affirmative defense, on the defendant has general support in legal treatises. 1 Wharton's Criminal Evidence, § 33; 21 Am.Jur.2d, Criminal Law § 144. General statements are frequently misleading, however, because it is not always clear whether the burden being described is the burden of producing evidence or the burden of persuading the jury.

The defense of entrapment is, by legal time standards, one of relatively recent origin. The earliest cases evidently arose in the late Nineteenth Century. Mikell, The Doctrine of Entrapment in the Federal Courts, 90 U.Pa.L.Rev. 245--247 (1942); see also Board of Commissioners of Excise v. Backus, 29 How.Pr. 33, 42 (N.Y.Sup.Ct.1864) where certain dictum denies the existence of the defense. For those of us who long for the clearer standards often missing in modern law, the words of the Victorian New York Court may supply some historical warmth:

'. . . The mode adopted by the plaintiffs to bring to light the malfeasance of the defendant, had no necessary connection with his violation of law. He exercised his own violation, independent of all outside influence or control. Even if inducements to commit crime could be assumed to exist in this case the allegation of the defendant would be but the repetition of the plea as ancient as the world, and first interposed in Paradise: 'The serpent beguiled me and I did eat.' That defense was overruled by the great Lawgiver, and whatever estimate we may form, or whatever judgment pass upon the character or conduct of the tempter, this plea has never since availed to shield crime or give indemnity to the culprit, and it is safe to say that under any code of civilized, not to say christian ethics, it never will.'

The historical background suggests that perhaps we should look with great care on the doctrine of entrapment. There is, of course, no question that entrapment is a defense in Delaware as elsewhere. Halko v. State, 8 Storey 383, 209 A.2d 895, 899 (Sup.Ct.1965). But how the doctrine is applied and an understanding of the purpose it is designed to serve are vital to its meaningful existence.

It is true that Federal Courts have in some cases adopted a confusing split burden of proof, confusing especially in the context of a jury charge. United States v. Sherman, 200 F.2d 880 (2d Cir. 1952). ¹ The accused is said to have the burden of showing by a preponderance of the evidence that a police agent induced the commission of the offense. If so, then the State has the burden of showing beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused was ready and willing, without persuasion, and awaiting a propitious opportunity. Gorin v. United States, 313 F.2d 641 (1st Cir. 1963).

This split burden is evolving to mean simply that the defense has the burden of production, in that it must support the claim of entrapment by some evidence sufficient to raise a factual issue and, the State, once the factual issue is introduced, has the burden of persuasion, in that it must, to justify a conviction, persuade the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that there was no entrapment. See 1 Federal Jury Practice and Instructions, § 13.13, 'Unlawful Entrapment'--Defined, pp. 290--292; United States v. Harrell, 436 F.2d 606 (5th Cir. 1970).

But no case has been cited which requires as a matter of Federal Constitutional law that the federal view of the burden of proof on entrapment is binding on the States. The freedom of the States to take a different view is illustrated by cases from the State of California, a State not known to be unduly strict on the rights of criminal defendants. People v. Valverde, 246 Cal.App.2d 318, 54 Cal.Rptr. 528 (1966); People v. Moran, 1 Cal.3d 755, 83 Cal.Rptr. 411, 463 P.2d 763 (1970); People v. Farley, 19 Cal.App.3d 215, 96 Cal.Rptr. 478 (1971); People v. Gossett, 20 Cal.App.3d 230, 97 Cal.Rptr. 528 (1971). See also State v. Cook, 263 N.C. 730, 140 S.E.2d 305 (1965). ² It is also interesting to note that a minority of the California Supreme Court does not think the issue of entrapment should be submitted to the jury but should be determined by the trial judge alone. See Chief Justice Traynor's dissent in People v. Moran, Supra, at 97 Cal.Rptr. 415--418, at 463 P.2d 767--770.

The Delaware Superior Court, after some thought, has been instructing juries that the burden is on the defendant to establish the affirmative defense of entrapment by a preponderance of the evidence. This is consistent with Delaware law on the issue of self-defense (State v. Robinson, 3 Terry 419, 36 A.2d 27 (Ct. of Oyer & Terminer 1944)) and on the issue of mental illness (Longoria v. State, 3 Storey 311, 168 A.2d 695 (Sup.Ct.1961)). Our Supreme Court has given careful consideration to the Delaware law on affirmative offenses and has expressly upheld our link with common law concepts notwithstanding trends favoring the defendant elsewhere. Quillen v. State, 10 Terry 114, 110 A.2d 445 (Sup.Ct.1955).

Entrapment is not like alibi. Halko v. State, 4 Storey 180, 175 A.2d 42 (Sup.Ct.1961). If the State cannot prove the defendant was present at the place alleged beyond a reasonable doubt, then the State can hardly prove the defendant committed a crime at the place alleged beyond a reasonable doubt. Presence is a necessary element of the crime. Notwithstanding some complex rationalization in some of the cases to the contrary, nonentrapment is not generally an element of a crime. If a private citizen without police connections does the same persuading, short of actual coercion or duress, as the police do when they entrap a defendant, the crime is committed notwithstanding the persuasion. The purpose of the doctrine of entrapment is to control impermissible police conduct. The purpose is not to make nonentrapment a necessary element of every offense regardless of its other elements. See Chief Justice Traynor's dissent in People v. Moran, Supra. It is unfortunate that many courts have failed to recognize the philosophical basis of the entrapment doctrine and this failure may have led many state courts to follow blindly the federal precedent on burden of proof.

Delaware should not desert the standard that the burden of proof on entrapment is on the defendant. It is not a complex matter which requires the sophisticated mental gymnastics...