Caldwell v. United States

• Decision Date: 10 December 1964
• Docket Number: No. 17627.,17627.
• Citation: 338 F.2d 385
• Parties: William CALDWELL, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

338 F.2d 385 (1964)

William CALDWELL, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.

No. 17627.

United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.

November 27, 1964.

Rehearing Denied December 10, 1964.

Samuel H. Liberman, II, St. Louis, Mo. (appointed by Court), for appellant.

Stephen H. Gilmore, Asst. U. S. Atty., St. Louis, Mo., Richard D. FitzGibbon, Jr., U. S. Atty., on brief, for appellee.

Before VOGEL, VAN OOSTERHOUT and MEHAFFY, Circuit Judges.

MEHAFFY, Circuit Judge.

The defendant was convicted by a jury of robbing a federally insured bank in violation of 18 U.S.C.A. § 2113.

On the morning of December 11, 1963, at approximately 10:30 a. m., a man later identified as the defendant entered the Lindell Trust Company in St. Louis, Missouri, and approached teller Barbara Ann Hallam. Carrying a black shaving case and a paper wrapped package, he placed these articles under the teller's window and told Hallam, "This is a bomb, stand very still, sound no alarms or you will be injured. Give me your tens, fives and twenties." After defendant repeated his demand, Hallam put $1,500.00 in five, ten and twenty dollar bills in the black case. The defendant ordered the teller to stand still for two minutes and he hurriedly walked out of the bank. The teller was unable to sound the alarm but shouted, "Help, robber," and pushed the "bomb" from the counter to the floor on the other side.

At this same time, bank guard Groover entered the building, noticed the robber who was leaving in a hurry, and after hearing the teller's plea for help, gave chase along with Vice President Greenleaf. Both pursued the robber as he ran across the street and through a parking lot where attendant Atkins also observed him fleeing. The robber then turned south through an alley and entered an unoccupied, parked automobile. He drove away as the bank guard fired four pistol shots in an attempt to prevent his escape. The guard and Greenleaf commandeered an automobile to continue pursuit and found the robber's car abandoned three blocks away. Subsequent investigation revealed the license on the abandoned car had been issued to the defendant.

Teller Hallam positively identified the defendant as the man who robbed her from two sets of pictures furnished by the police. She also identified defendant in a police "lineup" on the evening of the holdup. Groover and Atkins were also positive in their identification of the defendant, but Greenleaf, while able to describe the robber's general appearance, was not positive in his identification as he had not seen the robber's face.

Shortly after 3:00 p. m. on the day of the robbery, the defendant was arrested by St. Louis city police officers as he alighted from a taxicab near his home. He was taken to the Fifth District Police Station for booking where he was questioned and searched. He had on his person one twenty dollar bill, one five dollar bill, nineteen ten dollar bills, five one dollar bills and some change. He was then taken to Central Headquarters, arriving there around 5:30 p. m. The arrest was made some five or six miles from the Fifth District Station and while en route the police car had a flat tire which, coupled with snow covered streets, accounted for the delay in transporting defendant after arrest to the Fifth District Station, and thence to Central Headquarters.

On the following morning defendant was turned over to the federal authorities and promptly brought before the U. S. Commissioner at approximately 11:00 a. m. December 12, 1963 for arraignment on the instant charge.

Search and Seizure.

The defendant first maintains that the District Court erred in overruling his motion to suppress the introduction into evidence of his overcoat, assertedly obtained by illegal search and seizure.

When the pursuing bank employees found the robber's getaway car, the keys were in the ignition and the overcoat in question was partly inside and partly outside the closed car door. FBI Agent Buckley was instructed to investigate the car and its contents. He arrived at the location of its abandonment approximately thirty minutes after the robbery. Agent Buckley, without a warrant, searched the car, removed the coat, and then transferred the car to a government garage within less than an hour after the bank was robbed and several hours before the defendant was apprehended and his identity confirmed by witnesses.

The constitutional rights against illegal search and seizure as guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment must be zealously protected. However, it sometimes poses a difficult problem to determine whether these individual rights have been infringed or whether under the circumstances, the police have conducted a fair and reasonable investigation within constitutional bounds.

Defendant premises his Fourth Amendment defense on McDonald v. United States, 335 U.S. 451, 69 S.Ct. 191, 93 L. Ed. 153 (1948) and Preston v. United States, 376 U.S. 364, 84 S.Ct. 881, 11 L.Ed.2d 777 (1964). In the McDonald case, unlike the search of a suspected robber's getaway car in the present case, the officers had been surveilling the defendant's movements and rooming house for two months. Without response to any emergency or other compelling reason for not obtaining a search warrant, they broke and entered illegally the defendant's living quarters. In the Preston case, an automobile was allegedly searched illegally without a warrant, but the search was not made until after the defendant had been arrested, taken into custody and the vehicle impounded. There was no danger that the vehicle or any evidence therein would be moved outside the jurisdiction when searched after the defendant's arrest. Hence, the search was held unreasonable as being too remote in time or place to be incident to the arrest and, therefore, illegal in the absence of a warrant. However, the Supreme Court observed that, "What may be an unreasonable search of a house may be reasonable in the case of a motor car." Preston v. United States, supra at 366-367, 84 S.Ct. at 883.

In the instant case the suspected robber was still at large at the time of the alleged illegal search and capable of removing his escape vehicle across the nearby state line outside the jurisdiction of local authorities. The federal agents removed the overcoat and had the car towed to a government garage for further investigation in order to facilitate identity and apprehension of the escaping felon.

Only those searches and seizures without a warrant that are deemed unreasonable fall within the Fourth Amendment's prohibition. Preston v. United States, supra. The expediency of the events following the crime justified the investigating officers' confiscation of the felon's clothing and car in order to swiftly determine his identity and thereby effectuate his capture before he could make good his escape or destroy other evidence of the crime.

Inasmuch as the coat was not discovered by a search nor taken by seizure in the legal sense of the terms, further reason exists for holding the Fourth Amendment inapplicable. Respectable authority holds that it is not a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to observe in a public place that which is apparent for all the world to see. United States v. Lee, 274 U.S. 559, 47 S.Ct. 746, 71 L.Ed. 1202 (1927); Hester v. United States, 265 U.S. 57, 44 S.Ct. 445, 68 L.Ed. 898 (1924); United States v. Williams, 314 F.2d 795 (6th Cir. 1963); Trujillo v. United States, 294 F.2d 583 (10th Cir. 1961); Petteway v. United States, 261 F.2d 53 (4th Cir. 1958). And because seizure connotes a forcible dispossession from the owner, not a voluntary surrender, it was held in Lee v. United States, 95 U.S.App.D.C. 156, 221 F.2d 29 (1954), that stolen jewelry wrapped in a napkin which the defendant dropped on the street was properly admitted into evidence. See also Vincent v. United States, 8th Cir. 337 F.2d 891 (1964), and Burton v. United States, 272 F.2d 473 (9th Cir. 1960), cert. denied 362 U.S. 951, 80 S.Ct. 863, 4 L.Ed. 2d 869 (1960).

Accordingly, we do not believe admission into evidence of the overcoat which was found abandoned in a public place was an abridgement of defendant's constitutional guarantees.

Arrest and Detention.

Defendant next contends the District Court erred in overruling his motion to suppress the use of any statements made by him to government agents after his arrest because his was illegally taken into custody and held for an undue period of time before arraignment by a U. S. Commissioner.

Since the arrest was made without warrant, its legality must be tested by the standard of probable cause. We recently reviewed the leading authorities which have defined this standard in Schook v. United States, 337 F.2d 563, (8th Cir. 1964) and concluded:

"Reasonable grounds for suspicion when accompanied by facts or circumstances strong enough to justify a reasonably cautious man to believe the guilt of the suspect, suffice to constitute probable cause necessary for arrest without warrant. The Supreme Court in Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 161, 45 S.Ct. 280, 288, 69 L.Ed. 543, 39 A.L.R. 790 (1925) said, `The substance of all the definitions of probable cause is a reasonable ground for belief of guilt.\' See also Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 34-35, 83 S.Ct. 1623 10 L.Ed.2d 726 (1963); Henry v. United States, supra 361 U.S. 98 at 102, 80 S.Ct. 168 4 L.Ed.2d 134 citing cases; Draper v. United States, 358 U.S. 307, 313, 79 S.Ct. 329, 3 L.Ed.2d 327 (1959); and Mueller v. Powell, 203 F.2d 797, 800-801 (8th Cir. 1953)."

The arresting officer here knew that the bank had been robbed by a man identified from photographs as the defendant by several witnesses and that the license number of the automobile used by the robber was registered under the name and address of the defendant. This officer recognized the defendant from a photograph and arrested him when he returned to his home on the afternoon of the holdup. Such knowledge on...