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UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Charles LA ROCCA, Defendant-Appellant

United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit1955-07-19No. No. 337, Docket 23507
224 F.2d 859

Summary

Holding. The court affirmed the conviction, finding sufficient evidence of a drug sale without requiring proof of possession and rejecting both the insufficiency of evidence and entrapment defenses.

La Rocca was convicted of selling heroin. He argued the evidence was insufficient because the government failed to prove he possessed the drug. The court rejected this argument, explaining that possession is not an essential element of a drug sale charge. The evidence showed that La Rocca arranged a meeting with an informant and an undercover narcotics agent, discussed how the heroin could be diluted, directed them to a specific location, collected money from the agent, and instructed the agent to follow the informant to retrieve heroin from an apartment building—conduct from which a jury could reasonably conclude La Rocca orchestrated the sale.

La Rocca also claimed he was entrapped, but the court found no support for this defense in the record. His statements and behavior demonstrated he was an experienced narcotics dealer ready to complete the transaction whenever he felt it was safe to do so. Finally, La Rocca requested a jury instruction that the government's failure to call an informant as a witness should be held against the prosecution, but the court properly rejected this request because the informant was equally available to both sides.

Summary generated by law.co from the public-domain opinion. The opinion text itself is public domain.

Key issues

  • Whether possession of narcotics is a required element of a drug sale charge
  • Sufficiency of evidence for a drug sale conviction based on seller conduct
  • Validity of an entrapment defense
  • Adverse inference from prosecution's failure to call an available witness

Procedural posture

La Rocca appealed his conviction for selling heroin, challenging the sufficiency of the evidence and raising an entrapment defense.

Authorities cited

No cited authorities resolved to law.co cases yet.

Opinion

majority opinion

PER CURIAM.

The contention of the appellant that the evidence was insufficient to support the verdict is based to a lárgé extent on the mistaken idea that failure to prove his possession of the drug left it so. Though, of course, á seller of narcotics may, and very likely often does, have possession of what he sells, proof of possession is not necessarily a part of the proof of a sale. United States v. Brown, 7 Cir., 207 F.2d 310.

With that understood, it, is apparent from this record that the evidence was ample to sustain the verdict. From it the jury could, as it evidently did, find that one Wheeler, who was then facing a charge of violation of the narcotic laws, knew the appellant and took a clerk in the Bureau of Narcotics to meet him at the corner of Ludlow and Delancey Streets in New York about eight o’clock one evening. The three men had walked along Ludlow Street part of a block when the appellant told them to wait for his partner. They did that and when the partner, who had been following them, came up he was introduced by the, appellant as Eddie. Then Wheeler asked the appellant how many times the heroin they were going to purchase could be cut and the appellant asked whether it was for “snorters” or “mainliners”. When told it was for customers who were “snorters” appellant said it could probably be cut once. The appellant then led them, though not directly, to a luncheonette at the corner of Delancey and Essex Streets and leaving them inside with Eddie, went away. He returned in a few, minutes, took Wheeler outside and after a short conversation with him went back into the luncheonette and asked the government clerk for “the money”. When it was handed to him, he told the clerk to walk out when he saw Wheeler go by. Soon afterwards, Wheeler approached the luncheonette and the appellant told the clerk to “Go ahead”. Wheeler took him to an apartment building at 110 Delancey Street where the heroin was in a glassine envelope under a radiator in the hallway and the clerk got it by reaching under the radiator for it. A member of the jury who was not by such evidence convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that it was the appellant who had sold the heroin for the money he received would have been naive indeed.

Nor is there any support whatever in the record for the claim of entrapment which the appellant now makes. There is nothing to indicate that he wasn’t ready and willing to sell the heroin whenever he thought he had a safe chance to do so and his language and conduct shows him to have been no neophyte in that sort of business.

Neither side attempted to produce Wheeler, who was in jail at the time of the trial, as a witness and the appellant requested the court to charge that the failure of the government to call him would justify the inference that his testimony would have been unfavorable to the prosecution. This request was properly denied on the ground that, though he was in jail, he was equally available as a witness for either side. United States v. Cotter, 2 Cir., 60 F.2d 689; certiorari denied 287 U.S. 666, 53 S.Ct. 291, 77 L.Ed. 575; United States v. Antonelli Fireworks Co., 2 Cir., 155 F.2d 631, certiorari denied 329 U.S. 742, 67 S.Ct. 49, 91 L.Ed. 640.

Judgment - affirmed.

. Those who inhale the drug.