United States v. Upshaw

• Citation: 448 F.2d 1218
• Decision Date: 03 September 1971
• Docket Number: No. 28808.,28808.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Eddie UPSHAW et al., Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: United States Courts of Appeals. United States Court of Appeals (5th Circuit)

448 F.2d 1218 (1971)

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Eddie UPSHAW et al., Defendants-Appellants.

No. 28808.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

July 9, 1971.

Rehearings Denied September 3, 1971.

Arthur Parker, Birmingham, Ala., for Upshaw.

Fred Blanton, Jr., J. Howard Perdue, Jr., Birmingham, Ala., for Davis.

Demetrius C. Newton, F. Don Siegal, Birmingham, Ala., for Bethune.

Louis Bethune, pro se.

Wayman G. Sherrer, U. S. Atty., R. Macey Taylor, Melton L. Alexander, Asst. U. S. Attys., Birmingham, Ala., for plaintiff-appellee.

Before THORNBERRY and GODBOLD, Circuit Judges, and BOOTLE, District Judge.

GODBOLD, Circuit Judge:

Morris Davis, Louis Bethune and Eddie Upshaw were convicted by a jury of conspiracy to transmit forged instruments in interstate commerce, 18 U.S.C. § 371, and Bethune and Upshaw of actually transmitting forged instruments in interstate commerce, 18 U.S.C. § 2314. We affirm as to Upshaw and reverse as to Davis and Bethune.

We summarize briefly the background facts in the light most favorable to the Government. Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60, 62 S.Ct. 457, 86 L.Ed. 680 (1941). Defendant Bethune told Frederick McIver, then on parole for robbery, of a scheme with several other men to print and cash forged checks to be drawn on reputable business establishments and made to the order of fictitious payees. McIver was soon initiated into the scheme along with defendant Upshaw. Also included in the intrigue were Ernest Galloway, James March, and Phil Welch, who were government witnesses at the trial and are not involved in this appeal.

Defendant Davis operated a well-equipped printing establishment in Birmingham, Ala., known as Economy Press. An accomplished printer, Davis utilized his shop to print counterfeit checks and identification documents to be used by the group in their scheme. Among the counterfeit checks were checks drawn by Louisville & Nashville Railroad payable through the Citizens Fidelity Bank & Trust Company of Louisville, Kentucky, and drawn by Long Island Railroad payable through Chemical Bank and Trust Company of New York City. Identification cards printed included temporary Alabama driver permits, Birmingham Public Library cards, and Social Security cards.

The group, excluding Davis, travelled by car and plane to the states of Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina, and New York to negotiate the checks and receive the proceeds. Davis, besides doing the printing work, used his American Express credit card to rent automobiles for the group in their check-passing activities.

On June 24, 1968 several members of the group were arrested and, pursuant to a search warrant, a search was made of the premises of Davis' print shop which disclosed a large quantity of temporary Alabama driver permits bearing the same number as those used by the group as means of identification when passing the checks, and blank checks. Davis' motion to suppress evidence seized in the search, on grounds of lack of probable cause, was denied after hearing. Various seized items were admitted into evidence at trial.

Morris Davis

The court erred in overruling Davis' motion to suppress. The warrant was issued on the basis of an affidavit, set out in the margin,¹ by FBI Agent Emmons, which rested upon information obtained from an informant who, it was later revealed, was McIver. In a lengthy hearing McIver was offered as a witness by the government and Emmons by the defense, and both testified without objection to their doing so. Their testimony was consistent in almost all respects.

McIver testified that he did not know from what source the group obtained their identification documents or checks, only that he received his from Bethune. He did not know Davis and would not have recognized him "had he been written upon the sky." Nor had he ever been to Davis' shop; in fact, he did not even know the name of it. He did not know whether Davis printed the checks, but only suspected that he did. McIver explained the factors which caused him to suspect Davis, but the existence of grounds for his suspicion do not alter the fact that it never was more than a suspicion. He stated that he did not tell Emmons that Davis was the printer, or that the specific items mentioned in the affidavit were at Economy Press.

Emmons confirmed that all McIver conveyed to him about Davis' printing the checks was a suspicion, and that McIver did not purport to know that Davis printed them. He acknowledged that McIver did not tell him that the items specified in the affidavit were at the shop. Emmons testified further that McIver had not been working with him for approximately a week as stated in the affidavit, but that he had two interviews with McIver over a period of only three to three and a half days before the arrest.

Purged of its erroneous statements, the affidavit was wholly lacking in facts tending to show that Davis was printing checks or identification documents or that any of the documents were on the premises of the print shop. Stripped of its incorrect assertions, the affidavit became like that in Nathanson v. United States, 290 U.S. 41, 54 S.Ct. 11, 78 L.Ed. 159 (1933), consisting of nothing more than the bare statement of affiant's belief and cause to suspect that items were in a specified location. Mere affirmance of belief or suspicion is not enough. Id. at 47, 54 S.Ct. at 13, 78 L. Ed. at 162. See also Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 84 S.Ct. 1509, 12 L.Ed.2d 723 (1964).²

It is not necessary in this case for us to reach the question of whether a defendant is entitled to a hearing to test the underlying factual validity of the affidavit on the basis of which a warrant has been issued (as opposed to the affidavit's sufficiency if taken as true). And, it is equally unnecessary to decide what preliminary requirements, if any, a defendant must meet after he requests a hearing in order to demonstrate that there is an authentic issue of fact which will justify such a hearing. These questions have been neither considered by the District Court nor briefed to us on appeal.³ In this instance the court held a hearing, appropriately convened, on the issue of probable cause. We are called upon to review the consequences of that hearing, after the facts have come out. The evidence, fully explored at the hearing, revealed that what was said in the affidavit was in vital respects erroneous, and that the facts, when truly and correctly stated, would not support the issuance of a warrant.

* * * the warrant must contain allegations that go beyond the affiant\'s mere suspicion or his repetition of another\'s mere suspicion. The warrant is a check upon the officer\'s zeal in "the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime," and hence it must be tested against objective facts presented to a detached magistrate.

Gonzales v. Beto, 425 F.2d 963 (5th Cir. 1970).

Once it came to the attention of the court, from the testimony at the motion to suppress hearing, that evidence had been seized on the basis of statements of facts erroneously made by the affiant which struck at the heart of the affidavit's showing of probable cause, the court was required to grant the motion. The judicial system cannot be a party to the use of tainted evidence on the basis that, arguably, the defendant was not entitled to bring to the attention of the court what the court has come to know anyhow. Accordingly, the case as to Davis must be reversed.

Louis Bethune

Bethune appealed i. f. p. pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915, therefore his court-appointed counsel was entitled to a transcript at public expense. 28 U.S.C. § 753(f). The appointed appellate counsel is a different attorney than the one who defended Bethune at trial.

The transcript originally furnished the appellate counsel did not include opening and closing arguments of counsel. Bethune raised the issue of incompleteness, and this court ordered that the record be supplemented to include opening statements and closing argument of all counsel. The supplement was not furnished until after oral argument (counsel for Bethune having continued to object to the incomplete transcript), and then it contained only the opening statements and closing arguments of the prosecution. It turns out that, under what appears to be a local policy of the Northern District of Alabama, statements and arguments for the defense are not recorded by the court reporter unless requested.

Bethune points to several reasons why the lack of defense statements and arguments may have caused him injury. Counsel appointed for him on appeal did not represent him at trial, or otherwise participate in that trial, and, therefore, had no independent knowledge of trial events except as revealed by the transcript. Bethune claims that after seeking, and being denied, a continuance because of illness of his trial counsel, he was represented at trial by an attorney he did not authorize and who was requested by the court to defend him but never appointed to do so; that despite a motion for severance and the request for continuance he was forced to trial with the codefendants, each of whom had separate counsel; that the incomplete transcript reveals conflicting evidence regarding which of the defendants did certain incriminating acts; and that it was shown that Bethune owed money to a codefendant. Therefore, he contends the possibility may not be excluded that the counsel for a codefendant may have said something which prejudicially affected his rights.

Where new counsel is appointed for appeal, he may not be able to discharge his duty to seek out plain errors not brought to the attention of the court unless he can read the entire transcript. Otherwise, the right to assign plain error may become illusory. Hardy v. United States, 375 U.S. 277, 280, 84 S. Ct. 424, 11 L.Ed.2d 331, 334 (1964).⁴ And, of course, new appellate counsel may be unable to assign as error or present effectively matters...