Harman v. United States

• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit
• Writing for the Court: PARKER, , and SOPER and DOBIE, Circuit
• Citation: Harman v. United States, 210 F.2d 58 (4th Cir. 1954)
• Decision Date: 27 January 1954
• Docket Number: No. 6707.,6707.
• Parties: HARMAN v. UNITED STATES.

210 F.2d 58 (1954)

HARMAN v. UNITED STATES.

No. 6707.

United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.

Argued January 15, 1954.

Decided January 27, 1954.

J. Raymond Gordon, Charleston, W. Va., for appellant.

Duncan W. Daugherty, U. S. Atty., Huntington, W. Va. (A. Garnett Thompson, U. S. Atty., Charleston, W. Va., on the brief), for appellee.

Before PARKER, Chief Judge, and SOPER and DOBIE, Circuit Judges.

SOPER, Circuit Judge.

Roy Harman was convicted in the District Court of removing 15 gallons of distilled spirits, on which the internal revenue tax had not been paid, to a place other than a bonded warehouse, and also of possessing the same without having affixed an internal revenue stamp, denoting the quantity of distilled spirits contained therein, to the immediate container thereof, in violation of 26 U.S.C. §§ 2803 and 2913. He was sentenced to a term of three years in prison and has appealed on the ground that the liquor was taken in the course of an unlawful search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, and that the evidence procured by the seizure was therefore wrongfully admitted at the trial. He also contends that certain instructions of the court to the jury were erroneous.

On April 2, 1953 three West Virginia state enforcement officers, having had a number of reports that illicit liquor was being "run" out of Slate Creek Hollow near Raysal, McDowell County, West Virginia, drove an automobile into the mouth of the Hollow and remained on watch in the car without lights on the edge of a rough road through the woods. They remained on watch from 8 p.m. until 4 o'clock the next morning. They saw a truck coming down the Hollow on the road and when it reached a point 50 to 100 feet from them they put on the lights of their car and drove into the road facing the approaching truck. Thereupon the driver of the truck stopped the vehicle and backed it toward the side of the road in order to turn around and go back, but the motor stalled and the driver leaped from the truck and ran off into the woods and escaped.

As soon as the truck started to go back two of the officers leaped from their car and ran toward the truck. Their way was lighted by the lights of their car and by flashlights which they carried. They got close enough to the truck and to the driver to recognize him as a man they had known for a number of years and to identify him as the defendant at the time of the trial. The truck was also identified at the trial by a number of witnesses as having been driven regularly by the defendant.

After the driver of the truck ran away the officers examined it and found that it contained a number of gallon glass jugs full of moonshine liquor. Some of the jugs were exposed to view and their contents were plainly visible to the officers when they reached the truck. The officers removed the caps on some of the jugs and ascertained from the smell that they contained whisky.

In view of these facts we find no ground for the contention that the search and seizure of the truck was in violation of the constitutional rights of the defendant. In Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 147, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543, the Supreme Court pointed out that Congress made a distinction between the necessity for a search warrant in the searching of a dwelling and in that of an automobile or other road vehicle, and the court held that such a distinction was consistent with the Fourth Amendment because it does not denounce all searches and seizures but only such as are unreasonable. When the officers of the law have probable cause for believing that the...