Higgins v. United States
| Decision Date | 16 December 1946 |
| Docket Number | No. 9311.,9311. |
| Parties | HIGGINS v. UNITED STATES. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit |
Mr. James J. Laughlin, of Washington, D.C., for appellant.
Mr. M. Edward Buckley, Jr., of Washington, D.C., also entered an appearance for appellant.
Mr. Sidney S. Sachs, Assistant United States Attorney, of Washington, D.C., with whom Messers. George E. McNeil, United States Attorney at the time the brief was filed, and Arthur J. McLaughlin, Assistant United States Attorney, both of Washington, D.C., were on the brief, for appellee. Mr. Edward M. Curran, United States Attorney at the time the record was filed, of Washington, D.C., also entered an appearance for appellee.
Before GRONER, Chief Justice, and WILBUR K. MILLER and PRETTYMAN, Associate Justices.
Writ of Certiorari Denied May 5, 1947. See 67 S.Ct. 1304
This is an appeal from a judgment of conviction on the verdict of a jury in a narcotic case. The evidence on the trial followed the invariable pattern of similar prosecutions. An informer in the pay of the Government is first searched by an agent, given money and told to effect a purchase of the drug, the agent in the meanwhile following the informer and watching the transaction and thereafter receiving from the informer the evidence of the crime. In the present case the only variation occurred when the informer was placed on the witness stand and denied having any recollection of the events about which he was asked to testify. The sale in question, however, was witnessed by the agent, who never lost sight of the informer. After its consummation he received from the informer a package which, upon examination, was shown to contain the prohibited drug. The evidence to this effect, if believed by the jury, as it was, was sufficient to justify the verdict of guilty. We therefore pass from this phase of the case to the two other grounds on which we are asked to reverse.
The first of these is that the jury was not properly constituted in that it did not represent a proper "cross-section" of the community, as was held necessary in the very recent case of Thiel v. Southern Pac. Co.1 It is enough, perhaps, to say that there was no challenge of the jury on this ground at the trial and no motion to strike the panel. But we think the motion, whenever made, unsustainable for the reason that its only basis is that the jury included nine Government employees, none of whom was employed in the particular branch of the Government charged with the administration of the narcotic laws, and each of whom, when asked on his...
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