U.S. v. Turner

Citation389 F.3d 111
Decision Date16 November 2004
Docket NumberNo. 03-4719.,03-4719.
PartiesUNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. William Ivon TURNER, Defendant-Appellant.
CourtUnited States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (4th Circuit)

ARGUED: Michael Allen Bragg, Abingdon, Virginia, for Appellant. Jennifer Rebecca Bockhorst, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Abingdon, Virginia, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: John L. Brownlee, United States Attorney, Abingdon, Virginia, for Appellee.

Before WIDENER and WILKINSON, Circuit Judges, and Robert E. PAYNE, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Virginia, sitting by designation.

Affirmed by published opinion. Judge WILKINSON wrote the opinion, in which Judge WIDENER and Judge PAYNE joined.

OPINION

WILKINSON, Circuit Judge:

William Ivon Turner robbed the Bank of Marion, in Smyth County, Virginia, and then car-jacked an automobile. A jury convicted him of armed robbery, carjacking, and violating federal gun and conspiracy laws. Turner was sentenced to life imprisonment. He now appeals on several grounds. First, he claims that the trial court erroneously failed to excuse members of the jury venire who held accounts in different branches of the Bank of Marion. Second, he argues that there was insufficient evidence to support a conviction under 18 U.S.C. § 2113(e) (2000), which penalizes forced accompaniment during a bank robbery. Finally, he disputes that the statutory maximum sentence under that statute is life in prison. We are unwilling to create a novel per se rule for juror disqualification, which would unjustifiably impede the role of the trial judge. Moreover, Turner's statutory arguments fall short of the mark. We therefore affirm the judgment in all respects.

I.
A.

Shortly before the close of business on December 26, 2002, Turner entered the Royal Oak branch of the Bank of Marion. Seated at her desk was Judy Cregger, the bank manager. Turner told her that he wished to open an account. As she approached him, he lifted his shirt to reveal a gun stuck in his belt, and said, "Ma'am, we're going to the vault." Cregger got the keys and led him to the vault. There he produced a pillowcase, ordering her to fill it with money. She placed some 12,000 one dollar bills in it, and told him that was all she had. The rest of the bank staff — no other customers were present — was unaware of the robbery until Turner, exiting the vault with the money, brandished his gun and ordered the tellers to get inside the vault. Once they were all inside, he left the bank and joined his companion, Merrie Ellen Reid.

Cregger left the vault less than two minutes after Turner ordered the group inside and managed to see a large white car with Florida tags leave the parking lot. A witness arrived at the bank parking lot during the robbery and saw Turner get into the car. Turner and Reid headed north onto Interstate 81. At around 5:30 that evening, the police pulled the car over. They saw only Reid in the front seat. Before the officers could get a view of the back seat, Reid sped off. She eventually parked at a rural home after apparently having car trouble. Living there was eighteen-year old Sean Hildreth, whom she asked for a ride to the store. He agreed. Before he pulled away, Turner appeared, begged for a ride, and jumped in.

The police, who had been chasing Reid and Turner, saw the white car on Hildreth's property and at the same time saw Hildreth turn from the driveway. An officer of the State Police activated his lights to pull Hildreth over. Hildreth stopped the car in a high school parking lot, and the officer approached. Noticing Turner in the back seat, the officer reached for his weapon. Turner pointed his gun at the officer and the officer fled. Turner then put the gun to the back of Hildreth's head, and said, "Drive." When Hildreth was too scared to drive, Turner ordered him out of the car and assumed the driver's seat. Before Turner could leave, officers surrounded the car. They arrested Turner and Reid, and recovered Turner's gun and the pillowcase with $12,000 in it.

B.

Turner was indicted by a federal grand jury on January 8, 2003, and charged with nine counts: four counts of conspiracy, one count of aggravated armed bank robbery, one count of carjacking, two counts of possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, and one count of possession of a firearm while being a felon and/or illegal user of controlled substances.

Jury selection commenced on March 27, 2003. No veniremen answered in the affirmative when the district judge asked if they held stock in the Bank of Marion, a federally-insured bank based in Marion, Virginia, with 12 branches. However, defense counsel ascertained that two veniremen held accounts in the Bank, but not at the Royal Oak branch where the crime occurred. Turner argued that these veniremen should be struck for cause, but the trial court declined to strike them.

During the trial, Reid testified that Turner had not robbed the bank, but that a man she called "Boogie" had done so. Boogie forced her to drive away, she said, and ran into the woods when the car was stopped at Hildreth's home. Reid claimed that Turner had slept through all the commotion. The jury concluded otherwise, convicting Turner of having perpetrated the crime as recounted above. The judge sentenced Turner to life imprisonment for four counts, and a period of years on the remaining counts.

Turner unsuccessfully raised three claims which he now brings on appeal. First, he asserts that his trial was tainted because the district judge did not strike the veniremen who held accounts in the Bank of Marion. Second, he argues that even if this was not error, the district court wrongly subjected him to conviction under the federal statute that penalizes "forced accompaniment" in the commission of a bank robbery. See 18 U.S.C. § 2113(e). Third, he claims that even if he were properly convicted under § 2113(e), the statutory maximum under these circumstances is 25 years, not life in prison as the district court held.

II.

Turner complains that the trial court did not strike for cause two veniremen who banked at a different branch of the Bank of Marion than the one that was robbed. Because all accounts were centralized, Turner argues that the veniremen were financially interested in the case and were biased per se.

We review challenges to the qualifications of jurors under an abuse of discretion standard. United States v. Jones, 608 F.2d 1004, 1007 (4th Cir.1979). It is the settled law of this circuit that a district judge retains a "very broad discretion in deciding whether to excuse a juror for cause and his decision will not be overturned except for manifest abuse of that discretion." Poynter by Poynter v. Ratcliff, 874 F.2d 219, 222 (4th Cir.1989).

An abuse of discretion can be found in either of two ways. First, a district court abuses its discretion if it ignores a per se rule of disqualification after counsel moves to exclude a venireman. Second, if the court demonstrates a clear disregard for the "actual bias" of an individual venireman, reversal is justified. We consider both possibilities in turn.

A.

Turner seeks a per se rule disqualifying from jury service depositors of a robbed bank, even when the accounts are held in different branches. He thinks the rule should especially apply when the bank is small and regional, like the Bank of Marion with its twelve branches. But appellate courts are loath to announce such per se rules. "[U]nder our system it is [the trial] judge who is best situated to determine competency to serve impartially." Patton v. Yount, 467 U.S. 1025, 1039, 104 S.Ct. 2885, 81 L.Ed.2d 847 (1984). Per se rules of disqualification interfere with the trial court's administration of jury selection. Trials courts are expert at finding and applying facts, particularly in the conduct of a trial. Per se rules, by contrast, create situations in which no set of facts can allow the judge to utilize this expertise and discretion. This inverts our deferential standard of review. A list of per se exclusions "would burden the courts needlessly with a responsibility of endless speculation on the presumptive bias of potential jurors." United States v. Brown, 644 F.2d 101, 105 (2d Cir.1981).

We have long refused to manage jury selection from the court of appeals through promulgating rules of automatic disqualification. In Jones, we reviewed a conviction for armed robbery of a bank under the same statute Turner violated. Jones challenged veniremen whose spouses worked at a bank or whose relatives had been bank robbery victims. But "[w]e decline[d] to establish a per se rule of disqualification where a juror is related to a victim of a similar crime." Jones, 608 F.2d at 1008. In United States v. Loucas, 629 F.2d 989, 992 (4th Cir.1980), we refused to direct district courts "to strike jurors for cause because they have sat on prior similar cases." In Poynter, we refused to "adopt per se rules disqualifying potential jurors in medical malpractice lawsuits who are current patients of a defendant doctor or who are themselves defendants in a pending medical malpractice suit." Poynter, 874 F.2d at 222. In Bright v. Coastal Lumber Co., 962 F.2d 365 (4th Cir.1992), a lawsuit about coal mining leases, we refused to create a per se exclusion even when the potential juror acknowledged the possibility of a "subconscious bias" because the juror had a financial interest in a different coal mining lease lawsuit and was a friend of defendant's counsel. Id. at 367, 370. These facts did not require automatic disqualification, but were relevant circumstances for the district judge to consider when assessing the prospective juror's impartiality. Id. at 370.

In spite of this precedent, Turner now asks us to craft a per se rule under which trial courts in a bank robbery trial must disqualify veniremen who hold accounts...

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