United States v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 13874.

• Decision Date: 24 April 1963
• Docket Number: No. 13874.,13874.
• Citation: 316 F.2d 841
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America ex rel. Gus Alfred DeMOSS, Appellant, v. COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, County of Philadelphia and William J. Banmiller, Warden.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

316 F.2d 841 (1963)

UNITED STATES of America ex rel. Gus Alfred DeMOSS, Appellant, v. COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, County of Philadelphia and William J. Banmiller, Warden.

No. 13874.

United States Court of Appeals Third Circuit.

Argued April 6, 1962.

Reargued November 20, 1962.

Decided April 24, 1963.

Rehearing Denied May 16, 1963.

Alan J. Swotes, Philadelphia, Pa., for appellant.

Arlen Specter, Asst. Dist. Atty., Chief, Appeals Division, Burton Satzberg, Asst. Dist. Atty., Paul M. Chalfin, First Asst. Dist. Atty., James C. Crumlish, Jr., Dist. Atty., Philadelphia, Pa., for appellee.

Before BIGGS, Chief Judge, McLAUGHLIN, Circuit Judge, and SHERIDAN, District Judge.

McLAUGHLIN, Circuit Judge.

This is an appeal from the refusal of the district court to grant appellant's petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

Appellant, DeMoss, was convicted of murder in the first degree in the Court of Quarter Sessions in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Commonwealth v. DeMoss, 401 Pa. 395, 165 A.2d 14 (1960) affirmed and certiorari was denied by the United States Supreme Court, 365 U.S. 822, 81 S.Ct. 708, 5 L.Ed.2d 701 (1961). Appellant then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court alleging that (1) the conviction was illegal since he was not within the boundaries of the Commonwealth either before or at the time of the crime and (2) the conviction was violative of due process in that the record disclosed no evidence of guilt. The first contention was withdrawn at the time of oral argument¹ and the petition, based only on the second ground, was dismissed, 198 F.Supp. 570 (E.D.Pa.1961).

The sole question before us is whether this appeal is within the rule of Thompson v. Louisville, 362 U.S. 199, 80 S.Ct. 624, 4 L.Ed.2d 654 (1960) and Garner v. Louisiana, 368 U.S. 157, 82 S. Ct. 248, 7 L.Ed.2d 207 (1961). The Court held in those opinions that it is a denial of due process for a state to convict someone upon no evidence of guilt. The Court, however, was careful to point out that "decision of this question turns not on the sufficiency of the evidence, but on whether this conviction rests upon any evidence at all." Thompson v. Louisville, supra at 199, 80 S.Ct. at 625. Thus, the pivotal point of our inquiry is whether the conviction of DeMoss rests upon "any evidence" which would support the finding that he committed the crime charged.² Garner v. Louisiana, supra at 163 — 164, 82 S.Ct. at 251-52.

Without need of refinement upon the etymology of the word "any", it is enough that we find some evidence of "whatever * * * quantity"³ on all the essential elements of the charge.⁴ This must, of necessity, follow from the Court's admonishment to refrain from questioning the sufficiency of the proofs.

This case arises out of the Philadelphia murder of Lulubel Rossman on the evening of July 3, 1955. Mrs. Rossman, an elderly and eccentric widow who carried large quantities of money in new $100 bills, was killed by strangulation. The appearance of the room suggested that her death took place in the course of a robbery. DeMoss, Raymond Wilson, Frank Ellsworth and Robert Thomas were indicted for her murder by the Commonwealth, tried separately and each convicted. The Commonwealth's theory is that these four men conspired with each other to rob Mrs. Rossman: Thomas, a law enforcement officer in Miami, Florida, and DeMoss, a Tulsa, Oklahoma police officer, were absent members of the conspiracy; Ellsworth and Wilson were the men who actually committed the robbery, in the course of which Mrs. Rossman was killed.

Appellant's sole argument for reversal is that there is no evidence connecting him with the conspiracy: all the evidence shows is his association with others who may have committed the crime charged. We cannot agree.

DeMoss' acquaintance with Wilson dated back to occasions in 1945, 1947 and 1948 when he arrested Wilson in Tulsa. At the trial following the 1948 arrest DeMoss attested to Wilson's good character and recommended that he be paroled to him. DeMoss also indicated at this hearing that he had known Wilson for some time. He was assisted in the 1947 and 1948 arrests by Thomas, who at that time was also a member of the Tulsa police force. Thomas was on the force with DeMoss from January 1941 until April 1949, when he left Tulsa, moved to Florida and found work in the Dade County Sheriff's Department. In his last two years on the Tulsa police force he and DeMoss worked as partners. DeMoss' relationship with Ellsworth grew out of the latter's arrest on suspicion of burglary in April 1954. Ellsworth was released on bond but was required to report to the Tulsa police department whenever he returned to that city. For whatever reason, it is clear that DeMoss had frequent contact with Ellsworth from the time of his Tulsa arrest in 1954 until July 1955: he introduced him to a fellow police officer in the county detectives headquarters; Ellsworth called DeMoss at the latter's non-published home telephone number two months before the homicide; and DeMoss was in telephone contact with Ellsworth just seven days before the crime was committed.

Although establishing the relationship of DeMoss to all three co-conspirators, the primary thrust of the Commonwealth's proof was directed to the close relationship between DeMoss and Thomas in the months immediately preceding the death of Mrs. Rossman.

Thomas had been employed by Mrs. Rossman to do private investigation work for her in Florida. As a result, he was in constant contact with the deceased in the six or seven months prior to her murder; she visited him in Florida and frequently called him from Philadelphia. At the same time that Thomas began his association with the deceased he renewed his old tie-up with DeMoss, which had lain dormant in the six years since he had left Tulsa. Every Sunday, for about six months, Thomas called DeMoss at his position in the radio dispatchers' room in the Tulsa police department. Then in early June of 1955, Thomas, at his own request, returned a prisoner wanted by the Oklahoma authorities to Muskogee, Oklahoma. There was testimony by his commanding officer that this was a "very unusual" request, for normally the demanding state comes for the prisoner. While in Oklahoma Thomas visited DeMoss. Approximately two weeks after his return to Miami, DeMoss called Thomas. DeMoss' alleged purpose in calling was to persuade Thomas to repay $500 that he had borrowed in 1949. The story was, that although DeMoss had never loaned Thomas more than $5 at a time before, he loaned him $500 in 1949 when Thomas was about to leave Tulsa and was in financial trouble. It is interesting to note that in the 1953-1955 period alone DeMoss had borrowed over $1800 from lending institutions before he thought to ask Thomas for repayment of the alleged $500 loan.

Two days later, on June 26, 1955, Ellsworth, using an alias, called DeMoss from a Tampa night club. That same day he and Wilson, driving a 1955 Cadillac with Illinois license plates, arrived in Miami and were visited by Thomas at their motel. That same day, June 26, Mrs. Rossman was leaving Philadelphia to visit Thomas in Miami. Due to a misunderstanding with her chauffeur she was forced to cancel her trip and return to her Philadelphia hotel. Then followed several telephone calls between Thomas and the deceased, starting with a call from her on the afternoon of June 28 and ending with an 8:26 A.M.⁵ call on July 3, the day of her death.

Although Ellsworth and Wilson had a meeting with Thomas on June 26 in Miami and Ellsworth had called DeMoss from Tampa on the 24th, they were next seen in Philadelphia on July 1 and 2 by several witnesses, one of whom testified that they attempted to purchase two-inch adhesive tape from him. They stayed together, using assumed names, at the same hotel outside Philadelphia on July 3, having registered at 1:31 A.M. and checked out at 10:16 A.M. Later that day the deceased was murdered in her hotel room and when found was bound with two-inch adhesive tape. At 11:00 P.M. the same night Ellsworth was seen in the restaurant at the Washington, D. C. airport, and again a few hours later when he boarded a plane bound for Miami. He checked into a Miami...