## Facts

- A DEA confidential informant (“Bugsy”) contacted Ronald Olen Burrows about selling five pounds of methamphetamine to a purported buyer.
- Burrows agreed, met with codefendant Rodriguez, and obtained methamphetamine for the deal.
- Burrows and Bugsy met DEA Agent Steve Youngblood (posing as the buyer) in a parking lot; after Burrows produced the drugs, agents arrested him.
- Upon arrest, Burrows claimed he was acting as a cooperating undercover operative for Riverside County Deputy Sheriff Kenneth Vann and intended to set up Rodriguez, not traffic drugs.
- At agents’ request, Burrows called Rodriguez to come to the parking lot to assist in the transaction; Rodriguez and others were arrested when they arrived.
- At trial, Burrows testified he believed he was acting with law-enforcement authorization.
- Deputy Vann testified that Burrows had never worked as an informant for him, had not contacted him during the transaction, and was not working for him at the time.
- The district court instructed the jury on a public-authority defense; the jury convicted Burrows of possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine.

## Issues

1. Whether Burrows was entitled to avoid criminal liability under a public-authority theory based on claimed law-enforcement authorization for the drug transaction.
2. Whether the district court properly handled and instructed the jury on the public-authority defense in light of the evidence.

## Decision

- The Ninth Circuit affirmed the convictions.
- The court held the public-authority defense failed because the record did not establish actual authorization by a government official with authority to permit the charged conduct or reasonable reliance on such authorization.
- The court deferred to the jury’s resolution of the conflicting testimony regarding whether any authorization existed.

## Legal Principles

- A public-authority (and related entrapment-by-estoppel) defense requires proof that the defendant acted in reliance on authorization or assurance attributable to a government official with actual authority over the matter.
- The defense is not established by a defendant’s unilateral belief that he is operating for law enforcement without affirmative authorization.
- Credibility determinations and resolution of conflicting testimony are for the jury; on appeal, the verdict stands where the evidence supports the jury’s rejection of the defense.
- Where the jury is instructed on the asserted defense and convicts, an appellate court will not reverse absent legal error in the instruction or insufficiency of evidence to support the verdict.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit sustained Burrows’s methamphetamine convictions because the jury could reasonably find that no authorized law-enforcement direction existed for the transaction and that Burrows did not reasonably rely on an official’s actual authority to engage in the criminal conduct.


United States v. Burrows, 36 F.3d 875 (9th Cir. 1994)