Bailey v. United States

• Decision Date: 07 March 1969
• Docket Number: No. 21428.,21428.
• Parties: John L. BAILEY, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

135 US App. DC 95, 416 F.2d 1110 (1969)

John L. BAILEY, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.

No. 21428.

United States Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit.

Argued June 13, 1968.

Decided March 7, 1969.

Mr. Alan C. Campbell, Washington, D. C., with whom Mr. Bernard J. Long, Washington, D. C. (both appointed by this court) was on the brief, for appellant.

Mr. James R. Phelps, Asst. U. S. Atty., with whom Messrs. David G. Bress, U. S. Atty., Frank Q. Nebeker and Earl J. Silbert, Asst. U. S. Attys., were on the brief, for appellee.

Before BAZELON, Chief Judge, BASTIAN, Senior Circuit Judge, and ROBINSON, Circuit Judge.

SPOTTSWOOD W. ROBINSON, III, Circuit Judge:

Appellant was tried in the District Court on a single-count indictment charging robbery¹ of an employee of the Center Market Provision Company. The prosecutive theory was that he aided and abetted the principal assailant, who remains unknown, in the commission of the crime. At the close of the Government's case in chief, appellant moved unsuccessfully for a judgment of acquittal² on the ground that the proof did not establish a prima facie case against him. This motion he renewed, and the court again denied, after all the evidence was in. The jury returned a verdict finding appellant guilty as charged, and from the conviction this appeal was taken.

Appellant contends, among other things,³ that the denial of his motion was error. He insists anew that the evidence was legally insufficient to enable a jury to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that he participated in the commission of the offense. We agree and, without reaching any other issue tendered by appellant,⁴ accordingly reverse the conviction.

I

Appellant spent some of the afternoon of September 26, 1966, the date of the robbery, in the vicinity of the Center Market Provision Company, a wholesale meat distributor. He was first seen across the street from the company's place of business "shooting craps" with a short, stocky man — the "other man" in the case, who was to become the actual robber. At one point appellant left the other man but returned minutes later. Appellant subsequently left him again to join several men in a game of "five-and ten-cent crap" on a parking lot in front of the Center Market building. When the game terminated, appellant rejoined the other man, who in the meanwhile had remained across the street, and somewhat later they walked over to the parking lot and stood by a truck owned by Center Market. The offense for which appellant was prosecuted took place shortly thereafter.

Wilson C. Lawson, Jr., a part-time bookkeeper for Center Market, was the victim of the robbery. Each day he checked in the cash receipts of Center Market's drivers and prepared the company's bank deposit. His regular routine was to take the deposit with him when he left and to deliver it to a bank, at which he was employed full-time, on the following day.

As Lawson left Center Market on September 26, he carried a paper bag containing a deposit of approximately $4,200.⁵ He noticed appellant and the other man by the truck, but attached no significance to that circumstance. While Lawson stood on a loading platform locking the door, a driver whom he recognized came out of another building and conversed with him briefly. A second truck driver was sitting in a car parked facing the platform.

Lawson walked down the platform steps toward his car, which was parked next to the truck where appellant and the other man were. When Lawson reached his car, the other man took the bag with the deposit at gunpoint. Appellant, just prior to the holdup, had walked away from the gunman toward the curb of the street, and was then about ten feet away. The man who had conversed with Lawson yelled "Look, they're robbing him," and both appellant and the other man ran away in the same direction. The two truck drivers attempted to follow but lost them. Appellant was subsequently apprehended, but the other man was never identified or caught.

II

Appellant's conviction must stand, if at all, on the premise that he aided and abetted⁶ the unknown robber, for the record is barren of proof that appellant was an active perpetrator of the offense.⁷ And the sufficiency of the Government's evidence to sustain a conviction on that premise became an issue to be tested by familiar rules when the motion for judgment of acquittal was made. "The true rule * * * is that a trial judge, in passing upon a motion for directed verdict of acquittal,⁸ must determine whether upon the evidence, giving full play to the right of the jury to determine credibility, weigh the evidence, and draw justifiable inferences of fact, a reasonable mind might fairly conclude guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."⁹ For that purpose, the judge "must assume the truth of the Government's evidence and give the Government the benefit of all legitimate inferences to be drawn therefrom."¹⁰ Should the judge determine that prudent jurors might have no such doubt, or might disagree as to its existence, the matter lies within the jury's province and the motion must be denied.¹¹ But, very importantly,

"Guilt, according to a basic principle in our jurisprudence, must be established beyond a reasonable doubt. And, unless that result is possible on the evidence, the judge must not let the jury act; he must not let it act on what would necessarily be only surmise and conjecture, without evidence."¹²

Appellant's conduct, as portrayed in the view most favorable to the Government, amounted to presence at the scene of the crime, slight prior association with the actual perpetrator, and subsequent flight.¹³ A sine qua non of aiding and abetting,¹⁴ however, is guilty participation¹⁵ by the accused. "In order to aid and abet another to commit a crime it is necessary that a defendant `in some sort associate himself with the venture, that he participate in it as in something that he wishes to bring about, that he seek by his action to make it succeed.'"¹⁶ The crucial inquiries in this case relate to the legal capabilities of the evidence to sustain a jury determination that appellant collaborated to that degree in the robbery.

An inference of criminal participation cannot be drawn merely from presence;¹⁷ a culpable purpose is essential.¹⁸ In Hicks v. United States,¹⁹ the Supreme Court recognized that the accused's presence is a circumstance from which guilt may be deduced if that presence is meant to assist the commission of the offense or is pursuant to an understanding that he is on the scene for that purpose. And we have had occasion to say that "mere presence would be enough if it is intended to and does aid the primary actors."²⁰ Presence is thus equated to aiding and abetting when it is shown that it designedly encourages the perpetrator,²¹ facilitates the unlawful deed²² — as when the accused acts as a lookout²³ — or where it stimulates others to render assistance to the criminal act.²⁴ But presence without these or similar attributes is insufficient to identify the accused as a party to the criminality.²⁵ And this case is devoid of evidence, beyond what the previous associative acts and the subsequent flight might themselves reflect, that appellant's presence on the scene was designed to in any way sanction or promote the robbery.

III

The Government urges the efficacy of appellant's presence when it is coupled with his association with the perpetrator on the date of and shortly prior to the robbery. But an accused's prior association with one who is to become a criminal offender, even when coupled with the accused's later presence at the scene of the offense, does not warrant an inference of guilty collaboration.²⁶ Moreover, here the uncontradicted evidence shows that each of appellant's several brief meetings with the eventual robber occurred on the street or the parking lot in the open view of others, including the men with whom appellant fraternized for some time in a dice game²⁷ — evidence becoming even more eloquent when scrutinized in the light of what was not shown at trial. The Government's proof did not expose appellant as a planner of the robbery, or as an aide or lookout in its consummation,²⁸ or as one who shared in its proceeds, or even as one who knew the unidentified robber. In these circumstances, we cannot say that reasonable jurors could find a taint of criminality in appellant's limited association with him.

The Government contends finally that the strength of its case against appellant was enhanced by the fact that appellant fled the scene after the crime was committed. The evidentiary value of flight, however, has depreciated substantially in the face of Supreme Court decisions delineating the dangers inherent in unperceptive reliance upon flight as an indicium of guilt.²⁹ We no longer hold tenable the notion that "the wicked flee when no man pursueth, but the righteous are as bold as a lion."³⁰ The proposition that "one who flees shortly after a criminal act is committed or when he is accused of committing it does so because he feels some guilt concerning that act"³¹ is not absolute as a legal doctrine "since it is a matter of common knowledge that men who are entirely innocent do sometimes fly from the scene of a crime through fear of being apprehended as the guilty parties, or from an unwillingness to appear as witnesses."³²

With cautious application in appreciation of its innate shortcomings, flight may under particular conditions be the basis for an inference of consciousness of guilt.³³ But guilt, as a factual deduction, must be predicated upon a firmer foundation than a combination of unelucidated presence and unelucidated flight. Here there was no evidentiary manifestation that the appellant was prompted by subjective considerations related in any wise to the crime.³⁴ Moreover, as the evidence disclosed, appellant had several convictions prior to the affair in suit,³⁵ and these might well have dictated what seemed to him...