McConnell v. United States
| Decision Date | 14 May 1968 |
| Docket Number | No. 24934.,24934. |
| Parties | Joseph M. McCONNELL, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit |
Barry Hess, Mobile, Ala., for appellant.
Don Conway, Asst. U. S. Atty., Mobile, Ala., Vernol R. Jansen, Jr., U. S. Atty., for appellee.
Before BROWN, Chief Judge, AINSWORTH and GODBOLD, Circuit Judges.
Appellant Joseph M. McConnell was convicted on a jury trial of two counts of having passed and uttered a forged United States postal money order, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 500, and sentenced to a term of five years on each count to run concurrently.
On his appeal he assigns as error: (1) denial of his motion for acquittal in that the United States failed to prove that the crime occurred within the territorial jurisdiction of the court; (2) the trial court's restriction of the cross-examination of a principal prosecution witness, a Government handwriting expert, which was material to the credibility of the witness; and (3) the trial court's restriction of the closing argument of counsel which noted the absence of testimony of a Government eyewitness to a police line-up where appellant had been identified.
We perceive no error as claimed by appellant as to proof of venue of the crime. The Government witnesses testified that the money order was passed at Greer's No. 6 Store on Cedar Point Road, 3311 Dauphin Island Parkway, and that this store was in the City of Mobile, which is within the jurisdiction of this court. See Weaver v. United States, 5 Cir., 1962, 298 F.2d 496.
The forged money order was one of a series of money orders stolen in the burglary of the Nesbit, Mississippi, United States Post Office. The Government produced no witness who saw appellant pass the forged money order, the cashier who accepted the money order having been unable to identify the person who presented it. Appellant testified in his own behalf and denied having endorsed or cashed the money order. However, evidence was adduced to show one of appellant's latent fingerprints on the money order and Albert W. Somerford, Director of Scientific Identification Laboratories in the Bureau of Chief Postal Inspector, Washington, D. C., testified that in his opinion the writing on the money order was written by the same person, appellant, who wrote three so-called known samples of appellant's handwriting.
Defense counsel attempted to impeach the testimony of Mr. Somerford by interrogating him about testimony he had given against appellant in a trial in Marianna, Florida, involving another forged United States postal money order, one of the series stolen from the Nesbit, Mississippi, Post Office. Counsel tried to show that the expert witness had made a mistake in identifying the handwriting on the money order in that case as being that of appellant, as compared with three samples of his handwriting. The same samples of handwriting used in the Marianna, Florida, trial were used for comparison purposes in the instant trial though, of course, the same money order was not involved. The district judge declined to allow defense counsel to expand his examination of the expert witness in this regard, sustaining the Government's objection with the observation that this involved "another money order, another case."1
In our view the Government's case depended on the jury's acceptance of the credibility and expertise of Mr. Somerford. We intimate, of course, no view on whether or not the expert had previously made a mistake in the identification of appellant's handwriting at the Marianna trial. But defense counsel was entitled to probe this issue since the three counterpart exhibits of appellant's so-called known handwriting were the same in the Marianna case as in the present case. If the defense could show that the witness had erroneously concluded that one of the so-called known samples of appellant's handwriting was in fact written by another person, namely, one Delbert Gordy, and that a Government witness had so testified in the Marianna trial, to the knowledge of the expert, this would...
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