Harris v. United States

• Decision Date: 04 January 1957
• Docket Number: No. 16083.,16083.
• Parties: Charles C. HARRIS, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

239 F.2d 612 (1957)

Charles C. HARRIS, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.

No. 16083.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

January 4, 1957.

Charles C. Harris, Springfield, Mo., in pro. per.

Heard L. Floore, U. S. Atty., Fort Worth, Tex., for appellee.

Before CAMERON, JONES and BROWN, Circuit Judges.

BROWN, Circuit Judge.

Harris,¹ convicted of sending to Kay Frances Williams a photographic negative of an obscene picture through the mails in violation of 18 U.S.C.A. § 1461 after a vigorous defense by able Court-appointed counsel, appeals now pro se with numerous² complaints of error.

The only substantial question is whether harmful error was committed by the Trial Court in allowing considerable testimony to come in showing that Harris's purpose in taking, using and transmitting the picture (or negative) was to coerce Kay Williams into working for him as a prostitute.

The case and her story, as that of her sister Bertus Ayres, was certainly bizarre. Kay apparently sought out Abdullah for guidance. He excited, if not planted, uncertainty in her mind over her husband's love and fidelity. After coming back a now undetermined number of times for further advice about her husband, Abdullah suggested that Kay, to get the needed money to permit the consultations to continue, should work as a prostitute for him. Tenacious, she asserted, in her unrelenting interest in her husband's welfare, and apprehensive that Abdullah would exercise his "voodoo" powers, she kept coming back. On one such occasion, although strangely, not the last one, Abdullah ushered her to a back room where certain psychology books were read. During this seance, after drinking colorless, tasteless liquid, Kay suddenly became dizzy and the next thing she knew, Abdullah was helping her take her clothes off. This was followed by her posing, nearly nude, partly, but provocatively draped, for the picture in question. The posing done, dizziness disappeared, senses and composure were immediately regained, and both insisted that nothing else had transpired. Kay, returning on a later day, was then told by Harris that the pictures (four had been taken) would be circulated on the South Side. Subsequently Harris repeated the threat by telephone and told her he would send one of the pictures to her by mail. In the meantime, Kay's sister Bertus was likewise his steady patron, drank of the magic potion, found herself disrobing, soon posing, even more so.

Within a couple of weeks, an envelope enclosing a covering letter,³ both overwhelmingly established to have been in Harris's handwriting, was delivered through the mails addressed to Kay. Kay and her sister positively asserted that the negative was enclosed in that letter.

After a considerable amount of testimony about prostitution had come in, defense counsel, nowhere objecting to its admissibility, sought and obtained an immediate instruction that the jury should consider it solely in determining whether Harris actually mailed the picture, the purpose for which it had been taken and transmitted and should not consider it as showing that he had committed other crimes for which he was not then on trial. The defense indicated full satisfaction with that course and, more important, then proceeded by strenuous cross examination to develop it in great detail, adding much to this unsavory portrait. Efforts were made to force Kay and Bertus into an admission that one or both had formerly been prostitutes, were each violently incensed when each learned that Abdullah was trifling with the other (the implication being that the episodes did not end in a mere exposure of body and film) and reporting the matter to the FBI and Postal authorities was for pure vengeance. Much of this was to lay the groundwork for Harris's story, given later as a witness in his own defense.

In this, affording the jury much basis for infusing credibility into the weird tale of Kay, Harris admitted the pictures⁴ were taken at his place and that their purpose was to advance the sisters' prostitution. He asserted, however, that Kay and Bertus, contemplating prostitution, sought his advice. Aiding a self-analysis, pro and con, of the project, and despairing in his "professional" efforts to dissuade them from it, he then decided that, as they persisted in their proposed plans, he would permit them to take at his place, the alluring pictures needed for circulation in the area of their operation.

Not until cross examination of Harris on his prior and extensive criminal record elicited an objection of remoteness did the word "blackmail" come out.⁵ Denying motion for mistrial, the Court instantaneously instructed the jury not to consider it. The word, of common meaning, added nothing to the full and voluntary exploration of the whole matter of prostitution and its relation to this picture.

Invited and pursued by the defense, Harris cannot now transmute this into error by the Trial Court. In the face of Kay's strange and almost fantastic story, it was not for the Judge to intrude or prohibit the obviously skilled, effective cross examination of these damaging witnesses. If it were a mistake to develop it so extensively, or to refrain from vigorous objection to it, or its admission would otherwise have been erroneous, which we need not determine, this neither makes it the Court's error nor a palpable one of defense counsel so fundamental that we should correct it. On the contrary, this was a legitimate, well-grounded strategy with implementing trial tactics to destroy credibility of Kay and Bertus by piercing cross examination stating, restating, dissecting and exploring these many repulsive acts, their motives and...