Combs v. United States 8212 517
| Citation | 408 U.S. 224,33 L.Ed.2d 308,92 S.Ct. 2284 |
| Decision Date | 26 June 1972 |
| Docket Number | No. 71,71 |
| Parties | Elisha COMBS, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES. —517 |
| Court | United States Supreme Court |
James N. Perry, Cincinnati, Ohio, for petitioner.
William Bradford Reynolds, Washington, D.C., for respondent.
We granted certiorari on claims that evidence introduced against petitioner was obtained through an unlawful search that petitioner has standing to challenge. The Government now suggests that the warrant authorizing the search was invalid, but that further factual deter- minations are required to resolve the question of petitioner's standing to challenge the admission in evidence of the allegedly stolen goods seized by Government agents.
Petitioner and his father were convicted after a joint trial1 under an indictment charging them with having violated 18 U.S.C. § 6592 by receiving, possessing, and concealing 26 cases of tax-paid whiskey known by them to have been stolen from an interstate shipment. The Government's evidence at trial tended to show that petitioner delivered 40 cases of whiskey to the Newport, Kentucky, home of a Mrs. Ballard, who had previously expressed her willingness to buy it. The day after the delivery, Mrs. Ballard, having sold some of the whiskey but having thereafter heard that it was stolen property, telephoned petitioner and told him to remove the remainder of the whiskey from her home. Petitioner and one Martin then moved the whiskey to the home of petitioner's estranged wife; a few days later, however, petitioner telephoned Martin and told him that 'the heat was on' and the whiskey would have to be moved once again. The two men then transported the whiskey to Hazard, Kentucky, where they stored it in a shed on a farm owned by petitioner's father.
Sometime later, Martin told an FBI agent of the stolen whiskey; when the agent in turn passed the information on to the Kentucky state police, the latter obtained a warrant authorizing a search for, and seizure of, the whiskey at the property of petitioner's father. The warrant was supported by an affidavit, which the Government now suggests was insufficient under the holding of Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964). Armed with that warrant, the state police went to the farm owned by petitioner's father and conducted a search, which led to the discovery and seizure of 26 cases of whiskey identified as having been stolen from a railroad shipment intended for delivery to the Michigan Liquor Control Board. Petitioner was not living on his father's property, nor was he present there when the search and seizure took place.
Prior to trial, the defendants jointly moved the District Court to suppress the whiskey from evidence on the ground that there was no showing of probable cause to support the issuance of the warrant. The District Court, following an evidentiary hearing,3 denied the motion on the merits, and the evidence was subsequently introduced at trial. Following the conviction of petitioner and his father, only the petitioner appealed, raising the single issue of the validity of the warrant; the Court of Appeals did not reach the merits of his claim respecting the warrant, however, holding only that he lacked standing to challenge the legality of the search and seizure. 446 F.2d 515.
In concluding that petitioner lacked such standing, the Court of Appeals noted, inter alia, that he had 'asserted no possessory or proprietary claim to the searched premises' during the course of the trial. 446 F.2d, at 516. Clearly, however, petitioner's failure to make any such assertion, either at the trial or at the pretrial suppression hearing, may well be explained by the related failure of the Government to make any challenge in the District Court to petitioner's standing to raise his Fourth Amendment claim. In any event, the record now before us is virtually barren of the facts necessary to determine whether petitioner had an interest in connection with the searched premises that gave rise to 'a reasonable expectation (on his part) of freedom from governmental intrusion' upon those...
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...establishing the facts necessary to demonstrate a basis for standing to attack the search and seizure. See Combs v. United States, 408 U.S. 224, 227, 92 S.Ct. 2284, 33 L.Ed.2d 308. It has been made clear that capacity to claim the protection of the fourth amendment depends not upon a proper......
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