U.S. v. Lawson

• Decision Date: 20 November 1975
• Docket Number: No. 75-2085,75-2085
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Bobby J. LAWSON, Defendant-Appellant. Summary Calendar. *
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 804

523 F.2d 804

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Bobby J. LAWSON, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 75-2085

Summary Calendar. ^*

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

Nov. 20, 1975.

Herbert Shafer, Atlanta, Ga., for defendant-appellant.

John W. Stokes, U. S. Atty., Atlanta, Ga., Mervyn Hamburg, Reuben H. Wallace, Jr., Washington, D. C., for plaintiff-appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Before GEWIN, GOLDBERG and DYER, Circuit Judges.

GEWIN, Circuit Judge:

Appellant Bobby J. Lawson was convicted of violating 18 U.S.C. § 1955, which prohibits conducting an illegal gambling business, and conspiring to commit that offense in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371. ¹ At trial the parties stipulated that a conspiracy existed and that members of the conspiracy were involved in an illegal gambling enterprise; the only questions for the jury were whether Lawson was a member of the conspiracy and whether he committed a substantive violation of § 1955. After a careful review of the record and briefs, we conclude that Lawson's appeal is without merit and affirm the conviction.

His central contention is that there was insufficient evidence to show that he was a member of the conspiracy. Specifically, he objects to the court's denial of a motion to strike evidence concerning telephone calls from Pat Hall to Mary Ann Sheffield; the admission of the testimony of his former attorney; and the sufficiency of the identification of him by two government witnesses.

The government presented expert testimony concerning the manner in which a numbers operation is conducted, how this particular organization operated, and the roles of various conspirators. The testimony of other government witnesses connected appellant with the conspiracy through his participation, along with the kingpin of the operation, in collecting money from a relay station and in attempting to resolve a dispute concerning possible cheating by members of the conspiracy.

The government introduced wiretaps of telephone conversations between Mary Ann Sheffield, a co-defendant, and Pat Hall, Lawson's alleged agent. ² Calls over the Sheffield telephone were monitored for a total of ten days. During that period, Sheffield received four calls from Pat Hall in which Hall furnished Sheffield with wagers on various numbers. On at least three of these occasions, Hall stated, "I'm calling for Bobby" prior to providing the wagers. On each occasion, a few hours after Hall's call, Sheffield received a call informing her of the day's winning number, whereupon she immediately placed calls to both Hall and Lawson to inform them of the number. Although Hall was not indicted, she was alleged to be Lawson's paramour, and acting for him in giving and receiving information on the numbers racket.

He alleges that neither the wiretaps nor other evidence demonstrated who "Bobby" was or that Pat Hall was his agent and acting on his behalf, and therefore the transcripts of the Hall-Sheffield calls should have been stricken. There was sufficient independent evidence of appellant's participation in the conspiracy to make admissible against him Hall's statements, United States v. Prieto, 505 F.2d 8, 11 (5th Cir. 1974), provided she may properly be considered a co-conspirator even though not so named in the indictment. This requires "a showing of a likelihood of an illicit association between the declarant and the defendant," Park v. Huff, 506 F.2d 849, 859 (5th Cir. 1975) (en banc), which may be proved by "totally circumstantial" evidence. Id. Here, Sheffield notified Hall and Lawson almost simultaneously of the day's winning number. Moreover, the government's expert testified that the figures called in by Pat Hall for "Bobby" were not the wagers of an individual customer, but represented the account of either a "book" or a writer in the organization, or an independent "banker" who was "laying off" bets to the organization, i. e., in either case, a person who collects bets from the individual wagerers. The jury was cautioned as to the limitations on the wiretap evidence, and was told that it could not conclude, by Hall's declarations alone, that she was in fact acting for Lawson. Other evidence connecting Hall and Lawson included a phone call from Hall to Lawson's former attorney, discussed below, and the fact that she was with Lawson when he was arrested and had been seen with him on several occasions in subsequent months. Viewed in the light most favorable to the government, Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60, 62 S.Ct. 457, 86 L.Ed. 680 (1941), there was substantial evidence from which the jury could conclude that Hall's telephone calls were made with the knowledge of and on behalf of Lawson.

Lawson also contests the admissibility of the testimony of his...