State v. McCreary

139 N.W.2d 362, 179 Neb. 589, 1966 Neb. LEXIS 636
CourtNebraska Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 14, 1966
Docket36043
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 139 N.W.2d 362 (State v. McCreary) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Nebraska Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. McCreary, 139 N.W.2d 362, 179 Neb. 589, 1966 Neb. LEXIS 636 (Neb. 1966).

Opinion

Carter, J.

Defendant was convicted of breaking and entering a public telephone pay station in Fremont, Nebraska. Defendant was also charged with being an habitual criminal and was sentenced to 15 years confinement under the provisions of the habitual criminal statute. Defendant has appealed.

On the afternoon of December 10, 1964, defendant was in an apartment occupied by Sharon Stanek in the company of Sharon and Georgia Jones. It appears that one Cliff Freeman became the subject of conversation, Freeman being a cousin of Sharon and the boy friend of Georgia. Freeman was in jail in Omaha and money was needed to get him released. Defendant volunteered to get some money for them. He asked Sharon and Georgia to accompany him for this purpose. The three of them entered defendant’s automobile and drove directly to the Schmit Frontier Station. Defendant asked Georgia to engage the attendant in conversation and Sharon to stand by the telephone booth in the station. Sharon stepped into the booth with the defendant. She saw him working on the lower part of the telephone with something she described as being silver in appearance. The attendant and Sharon testified that they heard no dialing tones from the telephone caused by the dropping of coins into the pay telephone. Sharon testified that she heard a clatter of coins: before she left the booth. Georgia said that she heard the clattering of coins before defendant came from the booth and heard coins jingling in defendant’s pocket after he left the booth. The three left the station and returned to the apartment, where all three of them counted the money amounting to $20 or $25.

The attendant, Fred F. Ramakers, testified that the three came into the station about 9:10 p.m., on De *591 cember 10, 1964. He said Georgia engaged him in conversation and that defendant and Sharon entered the telephone booth which they occupied for 10 or 12 minutes. He heard no dial tones which he usually heard when the telephone was being used. He heard the sound of coins rattling out of a box. When the three left the station he notified the telephone company. Two employees of the company came to the station within 30 minutes. They opened the telephone and found the coin box missing and $4 in change on the floor of the telephone housing. The coins removed were covered with a sticky substance. The last time the company removed money from the coin box was on November 2, 1964, when it contained $16.10. The coin box was missing at that time and a new one was installed. The coin box was missing on December 10, 1964, and has not been accounted for. Sharon and Georgia saw no coin box and a search of the areas traveled by defendant after he left the station failed to produce it.

Law enforcement officers searched the apartment and found $22.05 in quarters, dimes, and nickels in a dresser drawer. The coins also had a sticky substance on them. In a subsequent search two- lock picks were found under a rug in the apartment, the fact of their existence in the room having been given by Georgia. The lock and the picks were sent to the laboratory of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The laboratory technician who made the examination testified that there were marks on all six tumblers on the lock, which could not have been made by the key to the lock. He testified that the picks in evidence could have been used to' open the lock, but there was no evidence from which he could conclude that the marks were made by these specific picks.

The State produced evidence furnished by customers that considerable money in excess of $4 had been put into the pay telephone after November 2, 1964, and before December 10, 1964.

The defendant complains of the action of the trial court *592 in overruling his motion for an order to produce for defendant’s inspection all items of physical evidence which the State proposed to introduce at the trial. The trial court has a broad judicial discretion in ordering the production of evidence in the possession of the State. Defendant has no inherent right to invoke this means of examining the State’s evidence merely in the hope that something may be uncovered which may be helpful to him. Valid reason must exist for sustaining such a motion. In certain types of cases, such as forgery and embezzlement, reason for the production of written instruments may require the sustaining of such a motion. But the State is not generally required to' produce its evidence solely to permit a defendant to build his case in a manner to avoid its implication. In Cramer v. State, 145 Neb. 88, 15 N. W. 2d 323, the rule is stated as follows: “The defense counsel in a criminal prosecution have no right to inspect or compel the production of evidence in the possession of the state unless a valid reason exists for so doing. The defendant has m inherent right to invoke this means of examining the state’s evidence merely in the hope that something may be uncovered which would aid his defense. In the administration of these rules the trial court has a broad judicial discretion and it is only when such discretion is abused that error can be based thereon.” Under the record in this case the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying the motion.

The defendant made two separate motions to suppress evidence in the possession of the State, both of which were overruled by the trial court after the taking of evidence thereon. Defendant assigns these rulings as error.

As to the first motion, it appears that D. W. Parker, deputy sheriff of Dodge County, filed an affidavit and obtained a search warrant from a justice of the peace to search the apartment occupied by Sharon, and by the defendant as her guest. Defendant contends that the *593 affidavit was insufficient to sustain the issuance of the warrant. The affidavit recites the break-in of the telephone booth, the presence of defendant, Sharon, and Georgia at the booth at the time of the alleged break-in, that they were seen leaving the apartment together shortly thereafter, and that an immediate search was necessary before the items lost in the break-in could be removed. The affidavit states that the items mentioned in the affidavit were based on information furnished by a “reliable informant.” The defendant relies on Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U. S. 108, 84 S. Ct. 1509, 12 L. Ed. 2d 723; and Ker v. California, 374 U. S. 23, 83 S. Ct. 1623, 10 L. Ed. 2d 726. These cases hold in effect that a warrant must be issued on the judgment of the magistrate and not on the mere suspicion, belief, or conclusion of the affiant seeking the search warrant.

In the instant case the affidavit stated that affiant believed the apartment occupied by Sharon concealed or kept “Tools and picks and equipment for burglarizing telephone booths and a coin receptacle from the telephone booth in the Mark Schmidt Frontier Filling Station.” The affidavit states that defendant, Sharon, and Georgia were in the filling station about the time the money was taken, and that a “reliable informant” informed the affiant that he heard money making noise in a box while defendant and Sharon were in the telephone booth and Georgia was talking to him. The affidavit recites that officer Fred Whitt saw the three leaving the apartment and that the break-in occurred about 9:15 p.m. on December 10, 1964.

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Related

State v. Davis
183 N.W.2d 753 (Nebraska Supreme Court, 1971)
State v. Waits
178 N.W.2d 774 (Nebraska Supreme Court, 1970)
State v. Howard
167 N.W.2d 80 (Nebraska Supreme Court, 1969)
George McCreary v. Maurice Sigler
406 F.2d 1264 (Eighth Circuit, 1969)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
139 N.W.2d 362, 179 Neb. 589, 1966 Neb. LEXIS 636, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-mccreary-neb-1966.