United States v. Paul MacDonald, 455 F.2d 1259, 1st Cir. (1972)

455 F.
2d 1259
UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,

v.
Paul MacDONALD et al., Appellants.
Nos. 71-1153, 71-1154, 71-1225.
United States Court of Appeals,

First Circuit.
Heard Dec. 6, 1971.
Decided Feb. 16, 1972.
Certiorari Denied May 30, 1972.
See 92 S.Ct. 2070, 2073.
William P. Homans, Jr., Boston, Mass., with whom Featherston, Homans

& Klubock and Thomas G. Shapiro, Boston, Mass., were on brief, for
Paul MacDonald, appellant.
Ira L. Schreiber, Providence, R. I., for Michael F. Kelley, appellant.
Harvey A. Silverglate, Boston, Mass., with whom Zalkind & Silverglate,
Boston, Mass., was on brief, for Lance H. Trott, appellant.
Paul F. Ware, Jr., Asst. U. S. Atty., with whom James N. Gabriel, U. S.
Atty., was on brief, for appellee.
Before ALDRICH, Chief Judge, McENTEE and COFFIN, Circuit Judges.
COFFIN, Circuit Judge.
This is a consolidated appeal involving three defendants, MacDonald, Kelley

and Trott, who were convicted in a jury trial of violating and conspiring to
violate 26 U.S.C. Sec. 4705(a) by dealing in cocaine not in pursuance of a
written order form issued for that purpose.1 MacDonald and Kelley were
sentenced on both the substantive and conspiracy counts to ten years
imprisonment, to be served concurrently; Trott was sentenced to five years
imprisonment.2
From the evidence produced at trial, it appears that the initial contact in
contemplation of a sale of cocaine was made by defendant MacDonald with a
fellow student who worked as a paid informer for the Bureau of Narcotics.
Preliminary arrangements were completed at subsequent meetings between
MacDonald, the student, her "money man" and a "friend" to sell the student a
half-pound of cocaine for $6,000. Shortly thereafter, MacDonald, who had been
joined at this point by his "partner, Lance [Trott]", accompanied the student and
the two undercover narcotics agents to a Cambridge store owned by defendant
Kelley. Kelley, who had been introduced as MacDonald's "source," gave a
small amount of a white powdery substance to the student for testing. As soon
as the substance was verified as cocaine, all three defendants were arrested.
Defendants Trott and MacDonald complain first of the district court's refusal to
instruct the jury that they should return not guilty verdicts if they found that
Trott and MacDonald were mere agents of the buyers. While we have
recognized that status as a buyer's agent can occasionally be a defense to a
charge brought under 26 U.S.C. Sec. 4705(a), see United States v. Barcella, 432
F.2d 570 (1st Cir. 1970), the circumstances justifying a "buyer's agent" charge
are extremely rare. Before such a charge is given, there must be some evidence
that the defendant's involvement was confined solely to acting as the agent of
the recipient, physically handling drugs whose ownership had already passed to
such recipient and hence not personally engaging in the sale, barter, exchange
or gift proscribed by Sec. 4705(a). Id. at 571-72. Since there was not a scintilla
of evidence here that would have justified a jury finding that Trott and
MacDonald were mere buyers' agents, the court was duty-bound to refuse to
give the instruction. See United States v. Platt, 435 F.2d 789, 792 (2d Cir.
1970); United States v. Vole, 435 F.2d 774, 776-778 (7th Cir. 1970); United
States v. Leach, 427 F.2d 1107, 1112 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, Tremont v. United
States, 400 U.S. 829, 91 S.Ct. 57, 27 L.Ed.2d 59 (1970).
All three of the defendants attempt to draw sustenance from our opinion in
United States v. Flannery, 451 F.2d 880 (1st Cir. 1971), for their contention
that the prosecutor impermissibly commented on MacDonald's failure to take
the stand in a manner prejudicial to them all. In his closing remarks, the
prosecutor characterized MacDonald's position as follows:
5
"[MacDonald]
is saying, I was entrapped. He is saying, I was innocent and by the
womanly guile of this young lady that took the stand in front of you, this otherwise
innocent individual [MacDonald] who testified he had previously-excuse me, who
did not testify, but of whom there was testimony he was previously involved in
drugs and was in fact a drug counselor at the time he was so willing to sell this
cocaine . . .." (portion objected to in italics)
Although Flannery's prophylactic rule is prospective, this court has long been
sensitive to the possible prejudice to defendants that may accompany
prosecutorial comment on what is both a constitutionally and statutorilyprotected right to remain silent.3 See, e. g., Desmond v. United States, 345 F.2d
225 (1st Cir. 1965). But we do not regard this as an instance calling even for
censure-much less for reversal. Defendants concede that the prosecutor's
reference to MacDonald's not testifying was wholly inadvertent, that is, that it
represented a verbal slip rather than a premeditated bad faith effort to extract
advantage out of the defendants' decisions not to testify while cleverly guarding
against risk of reversal. This fact alone would not immunize a comment if when
placed in context it could have prejudiced any of the defendants. But we are
satisfied that no prejudice occurred here since the context makes clear that
defendant's silence was not referred to as impliedly confirmatory of the
prosecutor's case, and the court gave an adequate curative instruction at the
conclusion of the argument.
A more troublesome issue is raised by the trial court's instruction on reasonable

doubt. The court variously instructed the jury that a reasonable doubt means
"proof to a moral certainty, proof beyond a doubt for which you can give a
reason"; at two other junctures, proof for which you can state "an intelligent
reason". We have not before been faced with an instruction on reasonable doubt
phrased in precisely these terms, although the overwhelming majority of courts
which have confronted instructions containing a definition of reasonable doubt
as a doubt "based on reason" or for which the juror can "give a reason" have not
found reversible error.4 In the context of the entire charge, we are convinced
that the intent and effect of the court's reference to a "reason" or to an
"intelligent reason" was solely to emphasize to the jury that its verdict should be
the product of a rational thought process. Individual jurors were not charged
with either articulating a supportable ratio decidendi or capitulating to the will
of opposing jurors, but instead were cautioned in terms, which were perhaps
unwisely emphatic, that a reasonable doubt was more than an irrational
hesitancy to convict based on pure conjecture. We do not regard this
formulation reversible as a matter of law.
We nevertheless feel constrained to add a cautionary note. Whatever their value

in other areas of the law in adding zest or currency to otherwise all too
predictable proceedings, personal variations on elements such as reasonable
doubt seldom represent sound judicial practice. A common effect of such
variations is to excite both controversy and appellate litigation without any
offsetting assurance that the attempted clarification is either necessary, see 8
Moore's Federal Practice p 30.06, or successful, see Holland v. United States,
348 U.S. 121, 140, 75 S.Ct. 127, 99 L.Ed. 150 (1954). Courts have consistently
approved several standard formulations of the reasonable doubt standard and

we cannot conceive of any compelling need for an innovation such as that at
issue here. Furthermore, we share the concern of those courts which, although
tolerating similar instructions, have disapproved of them as flirting
unnecessarily with an impermissible lessening of the government's burden of
proof. We therefore suggest that district courts in this circuit refrain in the
future from going outside of the consistently approved stock of charges on
reasonable doubt with variations such as the one employed here.
9
Defendants' fourth contention is that the court erred in refusing to instruct the
jury that it could not convict them of conspiracy to sell cocaine unless it found
that they had a specific intent to violate the order form requirement contained in
26 U.S.C. Sec. 4705(a). This contention was disposed of in United States v.
Bradley, 455 F.2d 1181 (1st Cir. 1972), which held that the mental element
required for conviction of conspiracy to violate 26 U.S.C. Sec. 4705(a) is an
intent to transfer narcotics illegally rather than an intent not to use an order
form. The court's instructions, phrased in terms of the necessity of finding that
the defendants specifically intended "to do something which the law forbids",
appropriately conveyed this distinction.5
10
Defendant Kelley further urges us to find error in the district court's negative
ruling on his motion to suppress both the "sample" of cocaine given the
student-informer and the larger quantity of cocaine seized in his shop at the
time of his arrest. He argues that the sample should be excluded because of an
alleged failure by the government to satisfactorily establish an unbroken chain
of custody and that the larger quantity should have been excluded because it
was seized without a warrant and without probable cause for getting one. We
find no merit in either contention. The sample was tested, found to be cocaine
and marked for identification purposes by the government agents assigned to
the case. Both agents testified at trial regarding the procedure followed in
testing and marking the sample and both identified the glassine bag introduced
by the government at trial as the one containing the sample which they had
tested. The jar containing the larger quantity of cocaine was not taken after a
general exploratory search was conducted of the type condemned in Chimel v.
California, 395 U.S. 752, 89 S.Ct. 2034, 23 L.Ed.2d 685 (1969). Given the high
risk that the larger quantity of cocaine would be moved before a search warrant
could be obtained, the knowledge that the sample had been drawn from a jar in
a bookcase in the shop, and the fact that the jar containing the larger amount of
cocaine was in plain view only a few feet from where Kelley was arrested, it
was permissible for the agents to seize the jar and its contents in the process of
arresting Kelley. See Harris v. United States, 390 U.S. 234, 88 S.Ct. 992, 19
L.Ed.2d 1067 (1968); Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 83 S.Ct. 1623, 10 L.Ed.2d
726 (1963); United States v. Bradley, supra 455 F.2d 1181 at 1187; United
States v. Palmer, 435 F.2d 653, 654-655 (1st Cir. 1970).
11
Nor was it error for the district court to refuse to sentence Kelley under the
Narcotics Addicts Rehabilitation Act of 1966 (NARA), 18 U.S.C. Sec. 4251 et
seq. Before an offender is referred to the Attorney General for an examination,
the court should satisfy itself that there is some likelihood that the offender is
in fact an addict. This is not a case like United States v. Williams, 407 F.2d 940
(4th Cir. 1969), in which the trial court was not adequately apprised of the
existence of NARA and consequently did not consider sentencing under that
Act. It was well within the sound discretion of the sentencing judge to decide
here, as he apparently did, that there had been insufficient evidence introduced
of Kelley's alleged addiction to justify invoking the procedures provided for in
NARA. See 18 U.S.C. Sec. 4252. See also United States v. Clayton, 450 F.2d
16 (1st Cir. 1971).6
12
The only other issue requiring discussion relates to the sentencing of defendant
Trott. Since Trott had been convicted on two counts of a narcotics charge
arising under 26 U.S.C. Sec. 4705(a), the trial judge regarded himself
precluded by the broad mandatory language of 26 U.S.C. Sec. 7237(d)7 from
imposing sentence under the Federal Youth Corrections Act (FYCA), 18
U.S.C. Sec. 5005 et seq.8 We are persuaded by the reasoning of the court in
United States v. Colamarco, 320 F.Supp. 616 (E.D.N.Y.1970), that Sec.
7237(d) does repeal so much of the FYCA, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 5010(a), as would
otherwise authorize outright probation or the suspension of a sentence imposed
for violation of Sec. 4705(a).9 See also United States v. Gibbs, 285 F.2d 255
(9th Cir. 1960); United States v. Lane, 284 F.2d 935 (9th Cir. 1960). Like the
court in Colamarco, however, we are convinced that the rehabilitative treatment
and indeterminate sentence provided for in 18 U.S.C. Sec. 5010(b) constitute
neither "probation" nor a "suspension of sentence" of the sort interdicted by
Sec. 7237(d).10 We therefore remand to the district court for reconsideration of
Trott's sentence to make the findings required by the Federal Youth Corrections
Act. Cf. United States v. Waters, 141 U.S.App.D.C. 289, 437 F.2d 722 (1970).
13
We have carefully considered the additional issues raised by the defendants in

their briefs and at oral argument and have concluded that they are without
merit. The convictions of defendants Kelley and MacDonald are affirmed in all
respects; the conviction of defendant Trott is affirmed but his case is remanded
to allow the district court to consider sentencing under the Federal Youth
Corrections Act in accord with this opinion.
Repealed. Pub.L. 91-513, Title III, Sec. 1101(b) (3) (A), Oct. 27, 1970, 84 Stat.
1292
Sentences were imposed on both the substantive and conspiracy counts under
26 U.S.C. Sec. 7237(b). Repealed. Pub.L. 91-513, Title III, Sec. 1101(b) (4)
(A), Oct. 27, 1970, 84 Stat. 1292
18 U.S.C. Sec. 3481 abrogates the common law incompetency of a defendant as

a witness in his own trial but also provides that the defendant's "failure to make
such a request [to testify in his own behalf] shall not create any presumption
against him."
See, e. g., Scurry v. United States, 120 U.S.App.D.C. 374, 347 F.2d 468, 469 n.
2 (1965) ("a doubt that is based on reason, it is founded on reason, it is a doubt
for which you may assign a reason"); United States v. Harris, 346 F.2d 182,
184 (4th Cir. 1965) ("a doubt for which you can assign a reason"); United
States v. Davis, 328 F.2d 864, 867-868 (2d Cir. 1964) ("one for which, when
asked what it is by a fellow juror, 'you can give a reason, then that indicates
that it is a reasonable doubt"'); Bernstein v. United States, 234 F.2d 475, 486487 (5th Cir. 1956) ("a doubt for which a reasonable man can give a reason");
Freeman v. United States, 158 F.2d 891, 896 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 331 U.S.
805, 67 S.Ct. 1187, 91 L.Ed. 1827 (1946) ("a doubt based on reason"); Murphy
v. United States, 33 F.2d 896 (3d Cir. 1929) ("a doubt for which some sound
reason can be assigned in your minds"); Contra, Pettine v. Territory of New
Mexico, 201 F. 489, 595-597 (8th Cir. 1912) ("one for which a reason could be
given")
In arguing that they cannot be convicted of a conspiracy to violate 26 U.S.C.

Sec. 4705(a) without proof that they knew of the order form requirement,
defendants rely heavily on Judge Hand's observation in United States v.
Crimmins, 123 F.2d 271 (2d Cir. 1941), to the effect that one cannot be held
guilty of a conspiracy to run past a traffic light unless one supposes that there is
a light to run past. We believe the more appropriate analogy for this case is that
put by Judge Lay in Nassif v. United States, 370 F.2d 147, 153 n. 9 (8th Cir.
1966):
"If one agrees to drive through a downtown section of a city at 60 mph without
stopping, one could be guilty of conspiring to run past a traffic light, even
though ignorant of such light, because one could reasonably suppose that there
is such a light to run past."
See also United States v. Mingoia, 424 F.2d 710, 712 (2d Cir. 1970).
6
If in fact, as appellant asserts, and the government does not deny, a post-trial
motion was timely filed, calling attention to appellant's status as an addict and
as having had no prior police record, and has not been acted upon, we suggest
that appropriate action be taken without suggesting what that action should be
26 U.S.C. Sec. 7237(d) provides that upon conviction of offenses specified

therein, including the offense of which Trott was convicted, "the imposition or
execution of sentence shall not be suspended, [and] probation shall not be
granted . . .."
Counsel for Trott and the United States Attorney both asked that Trott be
sentenced under the Federal Youth Corrections Act, but the trial judge was "not
convinced it is legally a proper sentence". Instead of directly sentencing Trott
under the Youth Corrections Act, the trial judge "commit[ted] him to the
custody of the Attorney General for the five-year mandatory minimum" and
added that he would "direct the chief probation officer to write to the Bureau of
Prisons that it is my recommendation Mr. Trott be placed in a type institution
under the Youth Corrections Program."
18 U.S.C. Sec. 5010(a) provides that "[i]f the court is of the opinion that the
youth offender does not need commitment, it may suspend the imposition or
execution of sentence and place the youth offender on probation."
10
A youth offender sentenced under Sec. 5010(b) of the Federal Youth Correction
Act must be conditionally released before the expiration of four years from the
date of conviction. Such youths must be unconditionally discharged on or
before six years from the date of conviction. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 5017(c)

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455 F.

UNITED STATES of America, Appellee,

United States Court of Appeals,

William P. Homans, Jr., Boston, Mass., with whom Featherston, Homans

This is a consolidated appeal involving three defendants, MacDonald, Kelley

A more troublesome issue is raised by the trial court's instruction on reasonable

We nevertheless feel constrained to add a cautionary note. Whatever their value

approved several standard formulations of the reasonable doubt standard and

We have carefully considered the additional issues raised by the defendants in

18 U.S.C. Sec. 3481 abrogates the common law incompetency of a defendant as

In arguing that they cannot be convicted of a conspiracy to violate 26 U.S.C.

26 U.S.C. Sec. 7237(d) provides that upon conviction of offenses specified

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