United States v. Massey

• Decision Date: 29 August 1977
• Docket Number: No. 75-20-Cr-Oc.,75-20-Cr-Oc.
• Citation: 437 F. Supp. 843
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America v. John Clayton MASSEY.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Middle District of Florida

437 F. Supp. 843

UNITED STATES of America v. John Clayton MASSEY.

No. 75-20-Cr-Oc.

United States District Court, M. D. Florida, Ocala Division.

August 29, 1977.

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Robert S. Yerkes, Asst. U. S. Atty., Jacksonville, Fla., for plaintiff.

Allan P. Clark, Jacksonville, Fla., for defendant.

OPINION

CHARLES R. SCOTT, Senior District Judge.

This case is on remand from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit which reversed defendant's conviction. United States v. Massey, 550 F.2d 300 (5th Cir. 1977). The Fifth Circuit found that this Court's failure to suppress defendant's involuntary admissions to an F.B.I. agent, "obtained in violation of his Miranda rights," was crucial to the government's proof against him, and therefore required reversal. Id. at 308. Now, defendant John Clayton Massey ("Massey") has moved the Court to suppress (1) statements made by him while in custody, to a Secret Service agent, and (2) all evidence gained from leads supplied by the statements (nonsuppressed) that were unlawfully elicited by the F.B.I. agent.

FACTS

Around 8:30 on the morning of September 24, 1975, Massey telephoned the F.B.I. office at Ocala, Florida. He told an agent that he had information concerning a conspiracy, in which he had been recruited to participate, to assassinate President Ford and Senator Kennedy. At Massey's suggestion, he and the agent met at the Oklawaha Bridge about one-half hour later. Massey drove a white panel truck. Massey revealed his true identity, said he had worked at a Super Test service station in the area, and discussed some details about the assassination conspiracy. He said that he had been contacted in June by a white male, in his fifties, who offered Massey an opportunity to make a large amount of money. At the man's directions, Massey quit his job at the gas station, returned to his mother's home in Royston, Georgia, and separated from his wife. He awaited further instructions. Massey said that during the first week of July an unidentified man called and instructed him to go to a certain truck stop in Fair Play, South Carolina, at 11:00 P. M. that night. Massey met the caller and two of them drove to a wooded area where they met four other white men. They told Massey that they were mercenaries training for guerilla activities in Central or South America. During the month of July Massey repeatedly met with the men to train. The sessions lasted for several days at a time and were at various locations in South Carolina and Georgia. Massey stated that he eventually discovered that the real purpose of the group was to assassinate President Ford and Senator Kennedy.

At the meeting at the Oklawaha bridge, Massey indicated that he was expected to meet one member of the group near Atlanta, on the morning of September 26. Massey requested $5,000 to continue his contact with the group and to assist the F.B.I. The agent told Massey that he did not have authority to agree to the payment and would have to contact his superiors in Jacksonville. The agent told Massey to call him about 1:30 that afternoon.

Massey called back at 1:00 P. M. and arranged for a second meeting at a truck stop near Ocala. At the meeting the agent agreed to pay Massey $5,000 for his aid if Massey would submit to a polygraph test first. Massey refused. The agent then advised Massey that if his statements were untrue he could be guilty of making false statements to a government agency, and if the statements were true, he could be guilty of conspiring to assassinate the President. Massey agreed to telephone his decision to the agent by 3:30 P. M.

At 3:30 P. M. Massey called the agent, refused again to take a polygraph test, said he would remain in the Ocala area but would not disclose his location, and declared that he would call the agent at 8:30 A. M. the next day. At 7:45 that night Massey was arrested.

When Massey was arrested, he was given the Miranda warnings. At the F.B.I. office he refused to sign an advice and waiver-of-rights form. The F.B.I. agents tried several times to interrogate Massey, but he repeatedly indicated that he wished to consult a lawyer. The agents ceased their attempts at interrogation. Massey engaged in small talk only. The agents took him to the Marion County Jail where he spent the night.

About 6:30 A. M., the following day, two F.B.I. agents transported Massey to Jacksonville for an initial appearance before the United States Magistrate. Before the start of the trip, Massey was again given the Miranda warnings. En route to Jacksonville, the F.B.I. agents questioned Massey about the veracity of his statements, but Massey declined to discuss the plot until he could talk with a lawyer.

The agents arrived in Jacksonville with Massey around 8:30 A. M. They took him to an F.B.I. office, not a detention cell. Massey remained there more than three hours, awaiting an initial appearance before the Magistrate. During that time, a Secret Service agent gave Massey the Miranda warnings. Massey refused to sign a waiver or to discuss the plot until he had conferred with a lawyer. Nonetheless, Massey did make some statements to the Secret Service agent.

Finally, one of the F.B.I. agents who accompanied Massey to Jacksonville, and was present when he spoke to the Secret Service agent, again attempted to interrogate Massey. Massey again refused to sign the waiver-of-rights form. The F.B.I. agent assured Massey, however, that he only wanted to question him about his itinerary, not about the plot. Massey then signed the waiver-of-rights form and furnished information which "provided the government with the details as to Massey's whereabouts during the time of the alleged plot and with witnesses who had seen Massey during this time." United States v. Massey, 550 F.2d at 306. That information, the Fifth Circuit ruled, must be suppressed because it was involuntarily given and obtained in disregard of Massey's right to counsel. Id. at 308.

LAW

I. Statements to Secret Service Agent

When Massey was arrested, he indicated that he wanted to consult with a lawyer before answering any questions. During the trip from Ocala to Jacksonville the following morning, Massey again declined to talk with an F.B.I. agent without first consulting a lawyer. When he arrived in Jacksonville, rather than being placed in a detention cell, Massey was taken to an F.B.I. office where a Secret Service agent conducted a basic, background-information interview. Massey did not object to the background-information questioning. In the Fifth Circuit, as well as in several other circuits, such routine gathering of background, biographical information is not interrogation which must be preceded by the Miranda warnings. United States v. Grant, 549 F.2d 942, 946-47 (4th Cir. 1977); United States ex rel. Hines v. LaVallee, 521 F.2d 1109, 1111-13 (2d Cir. 1975); United States v. Menichino, 497 F.2d 935, 939-42 (5th Cir. 1974); Farley v. United States, 381 F.2d 357, 359 (5th Cir. 1967).

The Secret Service agent then gave Massey the Miranda warnings, but Massey "refused to sign a waiver" or to discuss the purported plot to assassinate President Ford and Senator Kennedy "until he had talked with an attorney." United States v. Massey, 550 F.2d 300, 306 (5th Cir. 1977). According to the Secret Service agent, at that point Massey said, "But I want to explain something to you." The agent replied, "Well, you don't have to. You don't have to tell me anything until you talk to an attorney." Massey stated that he was not going to talk about the plot, but that he wanted to tell the agent something.

"Massey said that the F.B.I. had nothing to worry about, that when he was in a bar in Ocala, he overheard an unidentified drunk talking about a plot to assassinate President Ford and Senator Kennedy. He felt that the F.B.I. had over-reacted to his story." Id. at 306.

In making those statements, Massey changed his story from an earlier account given to the F.B.I. agent at the Oklawaha Bridge near Ocala.

The question presented is whether the statements made by Massey to the Secret Service agent should be suppressed as involuntarily stated while being deprived of the right to counsel.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals declared that Massey's statements to the Secret Service agent were spontaneous, voluntary, and apparently "not the result of interrogation or indirect attempts to gain information." Id. at 306. Consequently, those statements were not the product of any Fifth Amendment violation and are properly admissible under the guidelines of Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S.Ct. 1602, 16 L.Ed.2d 694 (1966); Hill v. Whealon, 490 F.2d 629, 635 (6th Cir. 1974); United States v. Vasquez, 476 F.2d 730, 732-33 (5th Cir. 1973), cert. den. 414 U.S. 836, 94 S.Ct. 181, 38 L.Ed.2d 72 (1973). Nevertheless, Massey argues that those statements were obtained in violation of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel, and that they must therefore be suppressed as the tainted fruit of a poisonous tree. Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963).

Massey relies on a recent Supreme Court decision, Brewer v. Williams, 430 U.S. 387, 97 S.Ct. 1232, 51 L.Ed.2d 424 (1977). The defendant had surrendered to police in Davenport, Iowa, where he was told by a lawyer in Des Moines, Iowa, via the telephone, as well as a lawyer with him in Davenport, not to talk with police until he had consulted with the lawyer in Des Moines. Moreover, the police had been instructed by both lawyers not to interrogate the defendant until he had arrived in Des Moines and conferred with his lawyer. Instead, en route to Des Moines, the police employed psychologically tactical language to appeal to the defendant's deep religious emotions, in order to elicit information concerning the location of the homicide victim. The Supreme Court held that such tactics were "tantamount to...