U.S. v. Redwine

• Decision Date: 11 January 1984
• Docket Number: 82-3055 and 82-3070,Nos. 82-3048,s. 82-3048
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Samuel G. REDWINE, Clifford G. Redwine, and Chester Strong, Defendants- Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 315

715 F.2d 315

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Samuel G. REDWINE, Clifford G. Redwine, and Chester Strong Defendants- Appellants.

Nos. 82-3048, 82-3055 and 82-3070.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued June 3, 1983.

Decided Aug. 17, 1983.

As Amended Oct. 13, 1983.

As Amended on Denial of Rehearings Jan. 11, 1984.

Vance W. Curtis, Tipton, Ind., James Holland, Indianapolis, Ind., Kathryn DeNeut Molewyk, Nashville, Ind., for defendants-appellants.

Walter W. Barnett, Dept. of Justice, Civ. Rights Div., Washington, D.C., for plaintiff-appellee.

Before WOOD and CUDAHY, Circuit Judges, and CELEBREZZE, Senior Circuit Judge. ^*

HARLINGTON WOOD, Jr., Circuit Judge.

Defendants challenge the sufficiency of the evidence supporting their convictions of conspiracy to intimidate a black family in connection with that family's occupation of a home in a white neighborhood in Muncie, Indiana; defendants also challenge the sufficiency of the evidence supporting their convictions of various substantive offenses including the firebombing of and throwing of rocks at the family's home, and possession of an unregistered firearm. We affirm.

I.

This sad tale of racial asperity begins on June 15, 1980, when Sammie and Hattie Williams, a black couple, and their four children moved into the all-white "Shedtown" neighborhood of Muncie, Indiana. Their home was located approximately a block and a half away from that of two of the defendants, Clifford and Samuel Redwine. The Williams family was the object of racially motivated harassment--including threats that their home would be burned, racial epithets, and the throwing of rocks and bottles against the house--from the moment they moved in until they abandoned their home when it was firebombed a month later. The government educed a variety of evidence, most of it circumstantial, that the defendants were prime movers in both the harassment and its incendiary culmination.

For example, one witness who lived next door to the Williams family testified that during the Williams' brief residency, she saw Samuel Redwine and others shouting racial epithets at the Williams' house at night. Another witness, also living next door, testified that in late June, 1980, he saw Chester Strong yelling similar epithets at the house, even as one of the Williams children was playing in the yard. Clifford Redwine, father of Samuel, rode by the Williams home nearly every day, circling the block and watching the house.

Defendants' conduct quickly escalated. A witness who lived across the street from the Williams home testified that she saw Samuel Redwine throw a rock through a window of the home at midnight on June 25, 1980. Another neighbor testified that, also in late June, she saw Samuel Redwine, accompanied by others, throwing rocks through a window of the house at about 10:00 p.m. In the course of investigating the June 25 incident, a Muncie police officer interviewed a woman who lived across the street from Williams; the woman reported that she had seen Samuel Redwine throw a rock through the Williams' window that evening. However, when the officer next went to the Redwine house, Clifford Redwine, sitting on the front porch with his sons, Samuel and Jack, reported, "My boys have been here on the porch with me all evening."

The government also assembled a mosaic of evidence linking the defendants to the July 17, 1980 firebombing of the Williams' house. One witness, who "partied" with Chester Strong and Samuel Redwine throughout June, 1980, testified that on several occasions, Samuel Redwine stated that the black family "should be burned out" or "run out," and testified that Chester Strong stated similarly that the Williams family "shouldn't be there" and should be "burned out." Another witness testified that, two nights before the firebombing, he was asked by a member of a group which included Strong and Redwine whether he wished to participate in the burning of the Williams home. Chester Strong and Samuel Redwine were also part of a contingent which approached one witness the evening before the fire, and asked whether he wished to accompany them; at that time, either Samuel Redwine or Strong stated that "tonight was the night." The actual firebombing occurred at about 3:00 a.m. the following morning. Sammie Williams, awakened from his sleep, saw two bombs come through his window, explode, and then burst into flames; he fired his gun several times at a person visible near his back fence. One witness, who lived a block away from the Williams home and was sitting in his front yard at the time and heard the breaking of glass, testified that within two minutes of this noise, and before the fire became visible, he saw Samuel Redwine running down the street away from the direction of the Williams home. Other witnesses placed Clifford Redwine in front of the Williams home within three to five minutes of the firebombing and placed Chester Strong at the scene watching the fire.

Further evidence established links between the defendants and the firebombing. One witness, who had known Samuel Redwine for almost his entire life, testified that the day after the fire, she heard his voice from an alley behind Williams home, stating, "I done a good job on the house, didn't I?" Clifford Redwine's son-in-law testified that Samuel Redwine asked him, using obscene racial epithets, whether he had heard of the bombing. When the witness responded by suggesting that "you guys probably did it," Chester Strong did not refute this suggestion, but instead "was just laughing along with everybody else." This witness also testified that Clifford Redwine intervened in the discussion, instructing the others to "shut up ... that it was an insurance job...." In an interview with an agent of the Treasury Department's Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division subsequent to the firebombing, Clifford Redwine, wearing a Ku Klux Klan insignia (one witness testified that Clifford Redwine had previously spoken of his membership in that organization), again protested that the conflagration was an "inside job," referring to Sammie Williams in obnoxious racist terms. Finally, numerous witnesses testified that Clifford Redwine appeared, with a gun on his hip, in the waiting room for witnesses called to testify before a state grand jury investigating the firebombing. Redwine urged the witnesses to go home and spoke to nearly every witness, asking them what they were doing there, inquiring rhetorically in one case, "Well you don't know nothing, so you can't say nothing, tell them nothing now, can you?" One witness, who was fifteen years old at the time, testified that these threats led him to give incomplete testimony.

In August, 1982, a federal grand jury issued a five count indictment in connection with these events. Count I charged Samuel Redwine, Chester Strong, Clifford Redwine and Jack Redwine with violating 18 U.S.C. § 241 by willfully conspiring together and with others between June 12, 1980 and July 17, 1980 to injure, oppress, threaten or intimidate the Williams family in the free exercise of their right to hold and occupy a dwelling without injury, intimidation or interference because of their race or color. The overt acts alleged in connection with the conspiracy included a discussion by all four defendants of the burning of the Williams' home; the throwing of rocks through the Williams' windows on June 25, 1980 by Samuel Redwine and Jack Redwine; and the firebombing of the Williams home on July 17, 1980 by Samuel Redwine and Chester Strong. Count II charged that Samuel and Jack Redwine violated 42 U.S.C. § 3631 by throwing rocks through the windows of the Williams' home on or about June 25, 1980 and thus, by force and the threat of force, willfully intimidated and interfered with the Williams family because of their race and color and because they occupied their home. Count III charged that all four defendants violated 42 U.S.C. § 3631 by throwing firebombs into the Williams' home on July 17, 1980, and thus willfully intimidated or interfered with the Williams family because of their race or color and because they occupied their home. Only Samuel Redwine and Chester Strong were alleged to have actually thrown the firebombs; Clifford and Jack Redwine were charged with aiding and abetting them in this endeavor. Count IV charged that Samuel Redwine, Jack Redwine and Chester Strong violated 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d) by knowingly possessing an unregistered firearm, a handmade firebomb. Count V charged the same defendants with making that weapon without government approval, in violation of 26 U.S.C. § 5861(f).

Jack Redwine's case was severed due to an uncompleted competency inquiry, and the remaining defendants waived their right to a jury. At the close of the government's evidence, the court granted Samuel Redwine's and Chester Strong's motion for judgment of acquittal on Count V of the indictment, but at the close of all the evidence, the defendants were convicted of the remaining counts as charged. Samuel Redwine was sentenced to five years of incarceration on the conspiracy count, one year on the firebombing count, one year on the rock-throwing count and five years on the firearm possession count; the first two sentences were to run consecutively and the last two were to run concurrently with the first two. Clifford Redwine was sentenced consecutively to five years of incarceration on the conspiracy count and one year on the firebombing count. The court committed Chester Strong to the Attorney General for supervision under the Federal Youth Corrections Act. All three defendants appealed, urging reversal due to insufficiency of the evidence.

II.

In examining the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a conviction, we must review the evidence and all reasonable inferences which can be drawn from the evidence in the light most favorable to the government. Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60, 80...