United States v. Jackson

• Decision Date: 26 November 1968
• Docket Number: No. 17118.,17118.
• Citation: 403 F.2d 647
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America v. Richard Lee JACKSON, Raymont Trink Barefield and Jonnie Coleman a/k/a "Trash", Raymont Trink Barefield, Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

403 F.2d 647 (1968)

UNITED STATES of America v. Richard Lee JACKSON, Raymont Trink Barefield and Jonnie Coleman a/k/a "Trash", Raymont Trink Barefield, Appellant.

No. 17118.

United States Court of Appeals Third Circuit.

Argued September 20, 1968.

Decided November 26, 1968.

Certiorari Denied April 1, 1969.

Jerome R. Balka, Balka & Balka, Philadelphia, Pa., for appellant.

John R. Galloway, Asst. U. S. Atty., Philadelphia, Pa. (Drew J. T. O'Keefe, U. S. Atty., Philadelphia, Pa., on brief) for appellee.

Before McLAUGHLIN, KALODNER and ALDISERT, Circuit Judges.

Certiorari Denied April 1, 1969. See 89 S.Ct. 1287.

OPINION OF THE COURT

PER CURIAM.

On October 10, 1966 appellant and two codefendants who have not appealed were convicted of robbing the Cedartown Mall, Pennsylvania branch of the Germantown Savings Fund Bank on March 23, 1966. Admittedly three men committed said robbery and escaped in a light green Oldsmobile.

The bank was robbed at about 10:30 that morning. Mrs. Jacobs who lived at 7932 Pickering Street, within ten blocks of the bank, testified that she was vacuuming her living room in the front part of her house. She looked out the large front window and saw a red Thunderbird automobile pull up and start to park in front of her house. There were two people in the car. One of them "on the passenger side got out immediately and as he got out he looked up the street, which would be east, and then he looked around like towards our house and up at our house so that I looked him straight in the face." She identified appellant sitting in the courtroom as that man. She said there was another car in the vicinity at that time in motion. Just as the men in the Thunderbird "were getting out, another car came up the street going in the same direction, which is east. It was an Oldsmobile. It was light green in color." The men from the Thunderbird walked up rather slowly and got into the Oldsmobile which pulled away and proceeded up the street. Mrs. Jacobs said she saw the three men again "15 to 20 minutes after they left in the Oldsmobile." As to this she testified that "I looked out there was one man getting into the Thunderbird, the back seat of the Thunderbird, from my side, and behind him there was a man coming walking rather fast, and he also got into the back seat, and then running up the street I could see a third man, who got into the driver's seat. Now I did recognize one of these men as the man that I just described earlier (appellant)." The Thunderbird drove away very fast. Mrs. Jacobs gave a partial identification of the license plate. She did not recognize the other two men in the courtroom, saying that she had not seen their faces clearly. The Oldsmobile was found by an F.B.I. agent in the vicinity of the 7900 block of Pickering Street at Greenwood Street. There was a woman's black stocking on the front seat.

The branch manager of the bank actually saw the holdup. While he was telephoning the police he saw the Oldsmobile in question outside the bank and at that time obtained its license number.

Mrs. Shermer as a witness said that on the particular morning she was proceeding in an automobile towards the shopping center where the branch bank is located when "There was a car passed us going quite fast." The car was pale green, she thought it was an Oldsmobile. There were three men in the car "* * the one man sitting in the back seat, he had a patch on the left side of his face near the collar line." The hidden bank camera took a picture of one of the robbers who wore a mask and had a white bandage on his neck. Appellant had been treated for a laceration of...