United States v. Edwards

• Decision Date: 07 March 1974
• Docket Number: No. 72-3829.,72-3829.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. McArthur EDWARDS, aka Edwards McArthur and Charles Darnell Ward, Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

488 F.2d 1154 (1974)

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. McArthur EDWARDS, aka Edwards McArthur and Charles Darnell Ward, Defendants-Appellants.

No. 72-3829.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

January 28, 1974.

Rehearing Denied March 7, 1974.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Michael R. Schumacher, Atlanta, Ga., Ben Atkins, Atlanta, Ga., for McArthur Edwards.

Marvin J. Zagoria, Atlanta, Ga., for Charles D. Ward.

William H. Stafford, Jr., U. S. Atty., Pensacola, Fla., Clinton Ashmore, Asst. U. S. Atty., Tallahassee, Fla., J. Worth Owen, Asst. U. S. Atty., Pensacola, Fla., for plaintiff-appellee.

Before THORNBERRY, SIMPSON and CLARK, Circuit Judges.

CLARK, Circuit Judge:

The Farmer's Bank of Malone, Florida was held up on the morning of August 14, 1972 by three Negro males who escaped in a taxicab with almost 43,000 dollars. Within four hours officers arrested Charles Pierce and Willie Lee Ward, Jr. at the home of Priscilla Hearn, a local resident. At the time of arrest they recovered 16,900 dollars of the loot and several items of incriminating paraphernalia connected with the robbery. McArthur Edwards was arrested that afternoon and Charles Darnell Ward, the brother of Willie Lee Ward, was apprehended two days later in Atlanta, Georgia. All four men were jointly indicted for conspiracy to rob and robbery of the bank. Pierce and Willie Ward pled guilty to the charge of bank robbery and were sentenced to 20-year terms of imprisonment. Edwards and Charles Ward were jointly tried on a two-count indictment before a jury that found Edwards guilty on both counts, for which he received concurrent sentences of 20 and 5 years. Ward was acquitted of the substantive offense, but was convicted on the conspiracy charge, for which he received a five-year sentence. Because the issues raised by each are completely different, we will discuss the appeals of Ward and Edwards separately.

I.

Charles Ward contends that the district court erred in denying the motion for a judgment of acquittal he made when the government rested its case. Alternatively, he contends that the evidence adduced against him at trial cannot, as a matter of law, support his conviction.

The government's evidence against Charles Ward was as follows. Edward Calloway, a taxidriver in Malone, testified that three Negro males waylaid him and stole his cab shortly before the robbery and that one of these highwaymen resembled Charles Ward. Leo Robinson, another Malone taxidriver, testified that on the afternoon of the robbery he picked up an unusual 100-mile fare to the Albany, Georgia bus station from a man answering Charles Ward's description, who was carrying a grocery bag similar to those used in the robbery. The prosecution also proved that Ward's latent fingerprint had been discovered on one of the money wrappers found in the grocery bags that had been seized in Priscilla Hearn's house at the time of the arrest of Willie Ward and Charles Pierce. The cache discovered there also included masks, weapons and other paraphernalia that were definitely connected with the robbery.

After the government had rested, Edwards, testifying on his own behalf, stated that Ward had driven with him from Atlanta, Georgia to Marianna, Florida (a town near Malone) on the night preceding the robbery, had been present in Edwards' motel room there when Pierce and Willie Ward had discussed the forthcoming robbery in nearby Malone, and had accompanied Edwards to the home of Priscilla Hearn (who was Edwards' aunt) after the crime and at a time prior to the arrest of Pierce and Willie Ward at the residence. Ward's proof consisted entirely of the testimony of one government witness whom he recalled. The record on appeal does not disclose that his retained counsel ever subsequently renewed Ward's motion for judgment of acquittal that had been made and denied at the time the prosecution rested its case.

The formulation of a proper test for appellate review must consider both that all of the evidence against Ward is circumstantial and that his conviction is for conspiracy. Ordinarily, "on a motion for judgment of acquittal, the appellate test is whether, taking the view most favorable to the Government, a reasonably-minded jury could accept the relevant evidence as adequate and sufficient to support the conclusion of the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. . . . In criminal cases based on circumstantial evidence our task is to determine whether reasonable minds could conclude that the evidence is inconsistent with the hypothesis of the accused's innocence." United States v. Warner, 441 F.2d 821, 825 (5th Cir. 1971) (citations omitted), cert. denied, 404 U.S. 829, 92 S.Ct. 65, 30 L.Ed.2d 58 (1972); United States v. Jones, 486 F. 2d 1081 (5th Cir. 1973); United States v. Martinez, 486 F.2d 15 (5th Cir. 1973). Weighing the sufficiency of the evidence in such a case does not depend upon whether "in the opinion of the trial judge or the appellate court the fails to exclude every reasonable hypothesis, but that of guilt, but rather whether the jury might reasonably so conclude." United States v. Fontenot, 483 F.2d 315, 321 (5th Cir. 1973).

To establish the essential elements of a conspiracy, the proof must show Ward agreed with one or more other persons to combine efforts to rob the bank, and it must show an overt act by one conspirator in furtherance of that agreement. United States v. Warner, supra. "Proof of the illegal agreement itself may rest upon either direct evidence or upon inferences drawn from relevant competent circumstantial evidence, usually the acts and declarations of the conspirators themselves, . . . and once the illegal conspiracy has been established, only `slight evidence' is required to connect an individual defendant with the conspiracy . . . ." United States v. Fontenot, supra, 483 F.2d at 321 (citations omitted); United States v. Lee, 483 F.2d 968 (5th Cir. 1973).

The proof in the case at bar clearly shows the existence of both an illegal agreement to rob this bank and overt acts by members of that conspiracy in furtherance of the plan. The close question is whether slight evidence was adduced to connect Ward with the conspiracy. The government urges that the two taxidriver identifications, Ward's travel to Florida and his presence in the motel room during the conspiratorial conclave, his trip with Edwards to the Hearn residence shortly after the robbery and Ward's latent fingerprint on the money wrapper cumulatively, if not separately, are enough to complete its case. We agree. While each item of proof as to Ward, if standing alone might be too weak to support a conviction, their cumulative impact constitutes more than the slight proof necessary to connect Ward with the planning and execution of the robbery.

The cab drivers testified that on the day of the robbery a man who possessed a physical resemblance to Ward was involved in separate incidents, each of which was probatively related to the crime. The identifications were far less than positive and neither separately nor together do more than suggest that one of the three active participants in the robbery could have been Ward. Edwards' testimony was contradictory, self-serving, confused and confusing; nevertheless, it placed Ward at the Marianna hotel room parley and at the Hearn home at critical times. However, parts of Edwards' testimony were intended to exonerate Ward. Edwards claimed that when the robbery scheme was brought up for discussion at the pre-dawn motel room gathering Ward had said, "You're crazy" and had gone to sleep without indicating any intention to join the conspirators. Furthermore, Edwards testified that five men had been present at this motel planning session. The weight the jury chose to assign to these parts of this story was within their province. They did not have to credit Edwards' entire story in order to believe any part of it. Wyatt v. United States, 263 F.2d 304 (5th Cir. 1959), aff'd, 362 U.S. 525, 80 S.Ct. 901, 4 L.Ed.2d 931 (1960). They could choose to accept as fact that Charles Ward had traveled from Atlanta, Georgia to the Florida conference site without also believing that he made this special trip, only to sleep through the strategy meeting. Similarly, they could doubt that a fifth man — assertedly the leader of the conspiracy — was present, in view of Edwards' inability to supply that yet unknown person with any identification stronger than a name and the fact that every other bit of proof indicated that a maximum of four persons were involved.

If the jury believed that Charles Ward was present when the bank robbery was planned, could have been one of the men who stole Calloway's taxi to use for the getaway, was with the confessed robbers after the crime and before their arrest, touched a money wrapper that was almost certainly taken from the bank, and met the description of a man who was in such a hurry to leave Malone with a grocery sack that he used a taxi to make a 100-mile trip, they were certainly possessed of more than slight evidence establishing that Ward was beyond a reasonable doubt guilty of conspiracy to rob the bank.

Guilt may not be inferred from mere association. "Mere knowledge, approval or acquiescence in the object or purpose of a conspiracy does not make one a conspirator." United States v. Thomas, 468 F.2d 422, 425 (10th Cir. 1972), cert. denied, 410 U.S. 935, 93 S. Ct. 1389, 35 L.Ed.2d 599 (1973); Causey v. United States, 352 F.2d 203, 207 (5th Cir. 1965). The proof in this case showed much more than that as to Charles Ward. Six fingerprints were ultimately identified on six different money wrappers all recovered, along with other items from the robbery, at Priscilla Hearn's. Four of the prints belonged to Willie Ward, and one each to Charles Pierce and Charles Ward. The recaptured money wrappers bore only a stamp of a date and amount of currency. They were not identified with the name of Farmer's Bank of...