Weaver v. United States, 16076.

• Decision Date: 04 March 1959
• Docket Number: No. 16076.,16076.
• Citation: 263 F.2d 577
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit
• Parties: Robert Theodore WEAVER, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.

263 F.2d 577 (1959)

Robert Theodore WEAVER, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee.

No. 16076.

United States Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit.

March 4, 1959.

Robert Theodore Weaver, pro se.

Harry Richards, U. S. Atty., and Wayne H. Bigler, Jr., Asst. U. S. Atty., St. Louis, Mo., for appellee.

Before JOHNSEN, VOGEL and MATTHES, Circuit Judges.

JOHNSEN, Circuit Judge.

The appeal is from an order denying, without a hearing, appellant's motion to have his sentence vacated. While the motion has been designated by appellant as "in the nature of a writ of error coram nobis", it is in its nature and effect one under 28 U.S.C.A. § 2255.

Appellant had been convicted and sentenced, under 18 U.S.C.A. § 2113(d), with one Hickman and one Hunt, for armed robbery of the Bank of Pevely, Pevely, Missouri, a federally insured institution. The sum taken from the Bank was $40,173 in cash. The convictions of all three defendants were affirmed by us on appeal. Hunt v. United States, 8 Cir., 231 F.2d 784.

Hickman was the first to resort to a § 2255 proceeding — which has almost become routine process in long-sentence cases. His motion was denied without a hearing, and we affirmed the denial. Hickman v. United States, 8 Cir., 246 F.2d 178. Now appellant Weaver is taking his turn at such an attack.

Appellant renews one of Hickman's contentions — that the Government knowingly had used perjured testimony to convict. We held in Hickman's case that the files and records conclusively showed that there was no possible basis in the situation for relief on this ground.

The perjury claimed lay in the fact that a witness named Jett had answered "No" to a question on cross-examination as to whether he ever had been convicted of a felony. Jett was at the time he testified an inmate of the Illinois State Penitentiary, under a sentence for a state offense, to which he had entered a plea of guilty. The record showed that Government counsel had informed the jury of Jett's prisoner-status and in his closing argument to it had suggested, as relating to whether Jett's credibility was involved, that it give consideration to whether Jett had deliberately answered the question falsely, or whether it was possible that he had regarded his plea of guilty as not having the significance of a trial conviction.

On these facts we held that "The record shows that the jury could not have been misled as to the character or credibility of the Government witness Jett because of his false answer to the question whether he had been convicted of a felony", and that there thus was no occasion to grant a hearing on the motion to vacate. 246 F.2d at page 181. The legal situation which we held existed necessarily would be as controlling of appellant's contention as of Hickman's.

But there is another reason on the record why Jett's false answer would not be entitled to any consideration in appellant's situation. Jett's testimony was against Hickman alone and not against appellant. And the facts to which Jett testified had no relationship to whether appellant had participated in the robbery, and contained no implication against him otherwise. Nor was there anything in the Government's other evidence that in any way linked appellant...