United States v. David Frances Ladley

In a two count indictment, appellant, David Frances Ladley was charged with distributing two pounds of LSD and possessing another 26 pounds with the intent to distribute it in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841 (a). After a trial on the matter in which he raised the defense of entrapment, the appellant was convicted of both counts. He currently appeals those convictions, asserting that the court erred in not suppressing evidence allegedly obtained in contravention of Fourth Amendment protections; that the appellant has demonstrated an entrapment defense as a matter of law; that the evidence adduced was insufficient to support a conviction in light of the entrapment defense; and that the appellant’s representation by trial counsel was so wholly inadequate as to deny him his Sixth Amendment right to effective counsel at all crucial stages of criminal proceeding.

After several months of investigation and acting upon information supplied to them by an informant, Paul Deschamps, (about whom we will have more to say later), officers from the Drug Enforcement Agency arrested the appellant, who was at that time carrying 26 pounds of LSD in a plastic garbage bag, just outside…