Bess v. United States, 3157.
| Decision Date | 25 April 1931 |
| Docket Number | No. 3157.,3157. |
| Parties | BESS v. UNITED STATES. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
J. Raymond Gordon, of Charleston, W. Va., for appellant.
James Damron, U. S. Atty., of Huntington, W. Va.
Before PARKER and NORTHCOTT, Circuit Judges, and ERNEST F. COCHRAN, District Judge.
Appellant, who will be here referred to as defendant, was convicted after trial before a jury in the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of West Virginia, at Bluefield, at the January term, 1930, being charged with violation of section 3296 of the Revised Statutes of the United States (26 USCA § 404), and with transporting intoxicating liquors in violation of the National Prohibition Act, and was sentenced to three years' imprisonment in the penitentiary, and a fine of $200.
Federal and state prohibition agents had received information that the defendant was bringing a carload of liquor to Huntington, and would make a delivery of some of said liquor to a certain place in the city of Huntington at a certain time in the evening. At the time fixed, the prohibition agents went to the place where the liquor was to be delivered. One of the agents concealed himself in the house where the delivery was to be made, another agent outside of the house, and one in front of the house near where the car driven by defendant would stop. A few minutes after the officers arrived, the defendant drove up in a car fitting the description they had as of the car in which the liquor was to be carried, and stopped in front of the house where the delivery was to be made. Immediately after the car was stopped in front of the house, the defendant got out of the car with two packages protruding from his pockets, and started to the house where the delivery was supposed to be made. The agent stationed near the car immediately went to the automobile, the door of same being open, and saw two one-gallon jugs on the floor near the seat of the automobile. The agent took the jugs from the car, and started following defendant in the direction of the house. When defendant reached the house and went up on the porch, the agent stationed in the house opened the door and met him on the porch. The defendant was arrested and searched, and the packages in his pockets were found to be two quart bottles of whisky, and the jugs found in the automobile were also found to contain whisky. The car was seized. The arrest of defendant, the search and seizure of the car, and the search of the defendant after the arrest, all happened in a short space of time.
The question raised on appeal is that the search of the defendant was in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.
In a recent case decided by this court, Fisher v. United States, 46 F.(2d) 994, decided January 31, 1931, this court dealt with a similar set of circumstances, and held that officers had a right to arrest one whom they had reason to believe was engaged in a commission of a felony, and that...
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