U.S. v. Smith
| Decision Date | 18 February 2003 |
| Docket Number | No. 01-5469.,No. 01-5466.,No. 01-5468.,01-5466.,01-5468.,01-5469. |
| Citation | 320 F.3d 647 |
| Parties | UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Carlton Victor SMITH; Thomas Albert Nichols; John Herbert Crisp, Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
Jeffrey E. Theodore (briefed), David C. Jennings (argued and briefed), Assistant United States Attorneys, Knoxville, TN, for Plaintiff-Appellee, U.S.
William H. Ortwein (briefed), Ortwein & Ortwein, Chattanooga, TN, for Defendant-Appellant, Carlton Victor Smith.
John E. Eberly (argued and briefed), Chattanooga, TN, for Defendant-Appellant, Thomas Albert Nichols.
Rita C. LaLumia (argued and briefed), Asst. Federal Public Defender, Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, Inc., Chattanooga, TN, for Defendant-Appellant, John Herbert Crisp.
John Herbert Crisp, Atlanta, GA, pro se.
Before GUY, SILER and BATCHELDER, Circuit Judges.
Defendants Carlton Victor Smith, John Herbert Crisp, and Thomas Albert Nichols challenge, on several grounds, their convictions and sentences for conspiracy to commit bank robbery, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 371 and 2113, following bank extortions that occurred in Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Clarksville, Tennessee. Smith also challenges his money laundering conviction in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1957. Additionally Nichols challenges the sufficiency of the evidence in support of his firearm convictions under 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(c)(1). For the reasons that follow, we affirm the convictions and sentences of all three defendants.
In 1995, Douglas Daigle ("Daigle"), an unindicted co-conspirator, began planning the first of several bank extortions that took place over the course of sixteen months in Knoxville, Chattanooga, and Clarksville, Tennessee. Soon thereafter, Daigle asked his wife, Capri Daigle ("Capri"), to assist him with the bank extortion. Using information contained in a city directory and aerial maps of Knoxville, Daigle learned the locations of various banks and homes of bank managers. Daigle planned to target the homes of female branch managers for a home invasion. Once inside the branch manager's home, Daigle would abduct the branch manager's family and hold them hostage in order to force the manager to take a large sum of cash from the bank's vault and deliver it to a specified location to save her family from being killed. In the course of planning the Knoxville extortion, Daigle recruited several additional individuals including his wife's mother, Dena Farmer; her mother's live-in boyfriend, Ted Roberts; and Crisp.
In preparation for the Knoxville extortion, the five co-conspirators purchased communications equipment and obtained three firearms. Daigle selected the First American Bank as the target, and, along with Roberts and Crisp, conducted surveillance from behind the branch manager's house. Capri played the role of the branch manager as she and Daigle drove the routes involved to test the radio equipment.
On September 5, 1995, around 9:30 p.m., Daigle and Crisp forcibly invaded the home of Patricia Farry, branch manager of First American Bank. Once inside, they chained Mr. and Mrs. Farry's ankles, placed pillowcases over their heads, and explained that their purpose was to rob the bank. The Farrys' daughter remained asleep in her bedroom. Daigle questioned Mrs. Farry about the bank's security systems and how much money the vault contained. He told Mrs. Farry that she was to go to the bank as usual the next morning, remove the money, and deliver it to a specified location. If she failed to do so by 9:00 a.m., her husband would be killed with a bomb that would be strapped to him inside a van. Throughout the night, Daigle continued to go over the plan with Mrs. Farry and explained to her how to use the radio equipment and how to disarm the bomb.
Early the next morning, Mr. Farry was removed from the home. Mrs. Farry was told that her husband was taken to another location, which would be disclosed to her once she delivered the money. In actuality, Mr. Farry was taken outside into the yard where he was held at gunpoint by Crisp until Mrs. Farry left for the bank.
When Mrs. Farry arrived at the bank, she explained the situation to her employees and asked for their cooperation. The vault was emptied and Mrs. Farry returned to the vehicle with bags of money and waited for Daigle to radio her the drop-off location. After Mrs. Farry made the drop as directed, she was told to walk to a specified phone booth at a nearby Waffle House restaurant to await further directions regarding the location of her husband. The phone call never came. After Mrs. Farry left for the bank, Daigle and Crisp had moved Mr. Farry back to the master bedroom where they wrapped him in duct tape and chained him to the bed. The bomb was a fake.
Roberts retrieved the money from the drop-off location and met Daigle to divide the proceeds. Next, Farmer and Roberts delivered Crisp's share to his residence in Greenback, Tennessee. Daigle and his wife fled Knoxville and went to the Pigeon Forge-Gatlinburg area. A few days later, Daigle told Capri that he had thrown the gun he used into an overgrown area near Interstate 40. When Capri began cooperating with the FBI, she disclosed this location and the gun was found in March 2000. Although Farmer, who also cooperated with the FBI, testified that Crisp told her that he had buried his gun, no other weapons used in the Knoxville extortion were discovered.
By the winter of 1996, Daigle was running out of money and decided to target another bank. Farmer loaned Daigle $5,000 of Roberts's share of the proceeds from the Knoxville extortion to finance the second extortion in Chattanooga. The same plan was to be implemented, only this time defendant Nichols was to join Daigle as an "inside man."
On March 14, 1996, Daigle and Capri, along with Roberts and Farmer, met Nichols and Crisp at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Chattanooga to prepare for the extortion. Daigle had selected a SunTrust Bank in Chattanooga as their target. The branch manager, Teresa Bailey, lived just across the state line in Rossville, Georgia.
At about 8:00 p.m., Daigle arrived at the Bailey home under the pretense of purchasing a puppy that the Baileys had advertised. Once inside, Daigle pulled a gun and explained his plan to extort money from Mrs. Bailey's bank. Nichols, also armed, entered and they held Mrs. Bailey hostage at gunpoint until her husband and son arrived home for the evening. The entire family was bound. Mrs. Bailey's son was tied to his bed and Mr. Bailey was taken to the garage where he was held face down on the floor at gunpoint all night. Mrs. Bailey was told that her husband had been taken away in a van with a bomb strapped to him.
The next morning, Mrs. Bailey and her son went to the bank, gathered the money, and delivered it to the drop-off site as instructed over the radio by Daigle. Mrs. Bailey was told that her husband was at home with the bomb. Like the previous occasion, the bomb was a fake. Upon arriving home, Mrs. Bailey learned that her husband had freed himself after Daigle and Nichols had left him.
Nichols retrieved the money from the drop-off site and met Capri at the same Cracker Barrel restaurant to load the money into her car. After dividing the money, the conspirators returned to Knoxville and the money was divided between Nichols, Daigle, and Roberts. Daigle instructed Nichols to get rid of the weapons used in the extortion. Once again, Daigle and Capri fled to the Gatlinburg area.
Several months later, in the summer of 1996, Daigle began to plan what would be the third and final extortion. He selected the First American Bank located in Clarksville. Smith, who was introduced to Daigle by Crisp, joined the plan and was to accompany Daigle into the victim's home. Nichols would conduct surveillance as the "outside man." The modus operandi was the same as the Knoxville and Chattanooga extortions.
On December 12, 1996, while branch manager Carolyn Pierce was still at work, Daigle entered her home under the guise of a real estate agent. Mrs. Pierce's father, Leonard Beaudoin, and his wife, who were babysitting the Pierces' son, unsuspectingly allowed Daigle into the home. Once inside, Daigle held the Beaudoins and their grandson hostage at gunpoint. According to Mr. Beaudoin's testimony, an armed man wearing a ski mask and gloves, later identified as Smith, joined Daigle. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Pierce arrived home from work and was immediately bound and blindfolded. When Mrs. Pierce arrived home, Daigle explained his demands and told her that her husband would be killed by a bomb if she did not comply. At one point during the night, Daigle forced Carolyn Pierce to disrobe from the waist down and threatened to rape her while her family watched. Daigle also threatened that he would force her husband to perform oral sex on Smith.
During the night, Mr. Beaudoin managed to hide some of Smith's cigarette butts in a waste basket. The butts were later determined to contain the DNA of Smith.
On the way to the bank the following morning, Mrs. Pierce dropped Daigle off near a McDonald's restaurant, where he and Capri instructed Mrs. Pierce via radio. She proceeded to the bank, withdrew the money, and left it in her pickup truck at the location specified by Daigle. Smith and Nichols placed Mr. Pierce, who was still bound and blindfolded, into his vehicle and drove him to the parking lot of a Waffle House restaurant where he was later found.
Smith, Crisp, and Nichols were indicted and tried in the Eastern District of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Daigle was arrested but committed suicide before trial. Evidence at trial included the testimony of co-conspirators, Capri and Farmer, who cooperated with the FBI. All three defendants were convicted on...
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