Smith v. United States

505 F.2d 824
Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit·Decided November 13, 1974·No. Nos. 73-2062, 73-2141, 73-2142·Published·Cited by 17 cases

Opinion

JOHN W. PECK, Circuit Judge.

Involved here are appeals by three defendants-appellants convicted for interstate transportation of obscene films in a common jury trial (Nos. 73-2141 and 73-2142); also involved is an appeal from an order dismissing appellant Smith’s civil action for the return of seized property (No. 73-2062). Appellants Duncan and Smith, joined in the brief filed in appeals Nos. 73-2062 and 73-2142, and appellant Christman filed separate briefs in No. 73-2141. Each appellant has adopted by reference the arguments advanced by his co-appellants pursuant to Rule 28(i), Fed.R.App.P.

The facts are not in dispute. Richard Nunnally, a resident of Knox County, Tennessee, testified that he received a telephone call at his residence on November 7, 1972. The caller stated that a mutual friend, one George Duncan, had given him Nunnally’s name. The caller asked Nunnally whether he would be interested in some stag movies. Nunnally was noncommittal. A few days later, Nunnally received a phone call from the same individual who this time identified himself as Charlie Smith. Smith told Nunnally that he had made arrangements to obtain 2,400 reels of film and that he would like to meet to talk business. Nunnally received a third call from a person identifying himself as Charlie Smith on November 13, 1972, and subsequent to this phone call Nun-nally contacted the Knox County State Attorney General’s Office, the Knoxville Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The following day, November 14, 1972, Nunnally, agent Shanahan of the FBI and Captain Odom of the Knoxville Police Department, met Smith at a motel in Knoxville where Smith displayed three reels of sexually explicit film to them. Arrangements were made at this meeting for the purchase of additional stag films at a later date. A further contact firmed the contemplated transaction for the sale of some 2,000 stag films (at $6.75 per reel) on Friday, November 17, 1972, at the Holiday Inn West in Knoxville.

Nunnally and a number of federal agents went to Smith’s room at the Holiday Inn as planned, but Smith did not have the films with him in the room. Smith made a telephone call and appellants George Duncan and Melvin Christ-man appeared shortly thereafter. A quantity of films was unloaded from a Buick automobile parked outside the room and a random sampling of the films was made by agent Shanahan. Each of the appellants, as well as the agents present, assisted in unloading the automobile. After unloading, appellants Duncan and Christman left the motel room, got back into the Buick and drove away. They returned within a short time with another load of films and the second load was moved into the motel room.

Appellant Smith made it clear that he wanted to be paid before he turned the films over to Nunnally and his associates. In the presence of all the appellants agent Shanahan pulled a roll of money from his pocket and handed it to Smith. As Smith took the money in hand, Shanahan drew his revolver, announced that he was with the FBI, and placed appellants under arrest. FBI agents took 2,109 reels of film and 280 tapes into custody.

[826]*826Each of the appellants was interrogated while in custody. After being advised of his constitutional rights, and in spite of the fact that he said he did not wish to make any statements concerning the allegedly obscene materials, appellant Smith told an FBI agent that this was the first time anything like this had happened to him and that he knew he should not have done it. Similarly, appellant Christman refused to waive his rights but nonetheless volunteered that he had driven a 1973 Thunderbird from North Carolina with some of the materials seized at the time of the arrest. He also stated that the seized materials belonged to him.

Appellant Duncan executed a waiver of rights form and told his questioner that he had been in Charlotte, North Carolina, on the morning of November 17, 1972, and that another individual had come to his residence. He, together with this other individual, left Charlotte some time between 8:00 and 9:00 a. m. that morning and arrived in his Buick automobile in Knoxville, Tennessee, between 1:00 and 1:30 that afternoon. He further stated that there was another automobile with two individuals traveling with them in convoy and that they had loaded the car before they left Charlotte. After having made the first statement that they had loaded the car in Charlotte before they left, he changed the statement to say that the material in his car had been loaded from another car in Knoxville.

On April 30, 1973, appellant Smith filed a Complaint for Preliminary and Permanent Injunction, Declaratory Judgment and/or in the alternative, Motion for Return of Evidence under Rule 41(e), Fed.R.Crim.P. On that same date the district court denied the Rule 41(e) motion on the grounds that there was not at that time a criminal action pending against Smith. The United States filed its answer to the complaint on July 2, 1973, and on July 6, 1973, the district court dismissed the complaint on the grounds that the issues raised were moot because in the interim Smith had been tried before a jury and found guilty.

A single count indictment was returned on May 9, 1973, and appellants responded by filing a number of pretrial motions including motions for suppression of evidence, return of evidence, separate trial and dismissal of charges. All pretrial motions were summarily denied with the exception of appellant Christ-man’s motion for suppression of evidence, which was denied after an eviden-tiary hearing. During the course of the trial each of the appellants moved for acquittal on the grounds that the government had failed to introduce sufficient evidence. These motions were also overruled. Following the guilty verdict rendered by the jury the court sentenced each appellant to 30 months in prison.

Appellants attack the statute under which they were prosecuted, 18 U.S.C. § 1465, as unconstitutional under the standards announced in Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 93 S.Ct. 2607, 37 L.Ed.2d 419 (1973). As a corollary, they contend that the indictment thereunder was fatally defective in that it did not state facts sufficient to constitute an offense against the United States.

The statute involved prohibits the knowing transportation “in interstate or foreign commerce for the purpose of sale or distribution of any obscene, lewd, lascivious or filthy . . . film . .”1 Appellants argue (1) that § 1465 is not properly limited to any specifically defined sexual conduct; (2) that the statute requires that materials [827]*827be judged by a national standard not subject to rational definition; and (3) that the statute has read into it the “utterly lacking in redeeming social value or importance” standard rejected by the Supreme Court as vague and ambiguous. These arguments, based on Miller v. California, supra, were submitted before the Supreme Court’s decision in Hamling v. United States, 418 U.S. 87, 94 S.Ct. 2887, 41 L.Ed.2d 590 (1974), was handed down. As will hereinafter become apparent, Hamling provides the answer to each of the above contentions.

In Hamling the Supreme Court rejected an argument that 18 U.S.C. § 1461

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Smith v. United States, 505 F.2d 824 (6th Cir. 1974).

505 F.2d 824 (Smith v. United States) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related

Dixon v. State
72 So. 3d 171 (District Court of Appeal of Florida, 2011)
United States v. Fisk
255 F. Supp. 2d 694 (E.D. Michigan, 2003)
United States v. Robert Leslie Hendrieth
922 F.2d 748 (Eleventh Circuit, 1991)
State v. Schwartzmiller
685 P.2d 830 (Idaho Supreme Court, 1984)
United States v. Battista
646 F.2d 237 (Sixth Circuit, 1981)
United States v. Chapman
501 F. Supp. 698 (S.D. Ohio, 1980)
United States v. Wilbert E. Hackley
636 F.2d 493 (D.C. Circuit, 1980)
Shriner v. State
386 So. 2d 525 (Supreme Court of Florida, 1980)
United States v. Massey
437 F. Supp. 843 (M.D. Florida, 1977)
United States v. Germain
411 F. Supp. 719 (S.D. Ohio, 1975)
United States v. Marks
520 F.2d 913 (Sixth Circuit, 1975)
United States v. Carl R. Carter
506 F.2d 1251 (Sixth Circuit, 1974)