Robert Lee Haynes and Al Walter Bolden v. United StatesRobert Lee Haynes and Al Walter Bolden v. United States
The two' appellants, defendants below, were tried and convicted separately оf violations of Title
The government, in its brief, stating correctly that the evidence, viewed in the light most fаvorable to the prosecution, justified the jury in finding as it did, urges upon us that the evidence is sufficient tо sustain both convictions under both counts of the indictment.
The defendant Bolden testified at his trial. Admitting thаt he was in the company of Haynes and Purifoy, he denied that he had any knowledge of the illеgal transactions.
On the evidence as a whole, the theory of the prosecution mаy be thus stated. The appellant Haynes undertook to make by mail arrangements to havе marihuana sent from Mexico to San Antonio; Bolden furnished the transportation and providеd most of the interim financing; each of the defendants knew that the substance later found in Bolden’s car was marihuana and that it had been imported from Mexico.
The theory of the appellants is that since the proof established that the marihuana was brought from Mexico by a government informer, one Juan Sanchez, and his bringing it in was assisted by government agents, it could not be held that it was unlawfully brought in for the reason that, under the statute, it is not an offense for a government agent to bring marihuana into the United States, and further that since, under federal law, government agents are not required to pay any tax on mari
Appellants also argue strongly that the United States hаving brought the marihuana in and having assisted in its transfer from Sanchez’s car to the car of the defеndants, there was no violation of
Though when looked at from a completely technical point, these arguments may seem to have validity, this is only seeming because the record shows: that the defendants initiated the acts whiсh make up this ease by first writing to a wholesale distributor of marihuana in Mexico; and that the defendants were not entrapped but were trapped by the agent’s shrewdness in getting hold of aрpellants’ letters and in falling in with and bringing to fruition the getting of the marihuana into the United States and receiving and facilitating its transfer here without payment of the appropriate tax.
As we see it, though the defendants in this argument pile Pelion on Ossa to deprive the case of legаl substance by making it appear that there was no violation by the defendants but by the government itself, the facts, looked at in their reality and sequence, show that the commission of the оffenses, as to which the appellants were convicted, is clearly and thoroughly established. As to entrapment, which was not charged below and cannot be made for the first time hеre, 1 it is quite clear that the defendants were not innocent people, induced to сommit a crime which they had not the intention to commit, but were criminals whose unlawful career was cut short by the shrewdness of the government agents in ferreting out their illicit connections and bringing them to book for engaging in forbidden transactions on a large and wholesale scale.
We realize that the temptation, which is put in the way of people by the fact that there is so much money to be made on marihuana, makes difficult the will to resist, but the temptation was not supplied by the government but by the cupidity of the defendants, and it is uniformly held that it is perfectly legitimate for agents to ensnare a willing violator, especially where, as here, the defendants have undertaken to shrewdly circumvent the officers by themselves setting in motion the chain of events which resulted in their arrest and conviction.
The asserted defenses are without substance. The judgment is
Affirmed.
Notes
. See United States v. Countryman, 2 Cir.,