United States v. David Lee Peacock, United States of America v. William Lee Freeman

400 F.2d 992
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedJanuary 13, 1969
Docket17983, 17984
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 400 F.2d 992 (United States v. David Lee Peacock, United States of America v. William Lee Freeman) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. David Lee Peacock, United States of America v. William Lee Freeman, 400 F.2d 992 (6th Cir. 1969).

Opinions

McALLISTER, Senior Circuit Judge.

David Lee Peacock and William Lee Freeman were convicted by a jury of the armed robbery of a bank insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. They appeal.

On July 18, 1963, at about 10:30 A.M., the Continental Bank in East Cleveland, Ohio, was held up by two robbers armed with guns. At the time, three bank employees were working—the manager, the assistant manager, and the teller. Two of them were forced to lie down on the floor behind the counter, and the third ordered to stand nearby facing the wall. The two holdup men then went through the teller’s drawers, taking with them more than $18,000. The three employees were then herded into the basement and told to remain there while the robbers made their getaway. The manager called the police from a basement phone and afterward, going upstairs, he saw, through the wide high windows of the bank “a red Chevrolet—a Corvair type,” cut across the premises of a Gulf Oil Company service station and swiftly drive away. The manager stated that there were two men in the car, and that it did not have Ohio license plates.

At about 11:00 A.M., half an hour after the robbery, Special Agent Michael J. Walsh, Jr., of the FBI, had reached the neighborhood minutes after the police call had been received, and was searching for an automobile described as a red Corvair with out-of-state license plates. Shortly thereafter, he found it nearby. It was a 1962 red Corvair with out-of-state license plates, standing in the parking lot of the Cleveland Transit System which was located only a short distance from the bank. This Corvair had Maryland license plates and the car’s serial number was soon found to be identical to that on a Maryland Certificate of Title for a 1962 Cor-vair belonging to Robert Murphy of Adel-phi, Maryland. This car had been stolen thirty days before the bank robbery from a parking garage in Arlington, Virginia. Mr. Murphy was approaching the garage to get his car when he had seen it, only twenty feet distant, being rapidly driven away.

Appellant defendant Peacock, at the time of the trial in this case, was in the course of serving, in a federal prison, two concurrent sentences for two separate bank robberies, one in Memphis, Tennessee, and the other in Chevy Chase, Maryland, to which he had pleaded guilty. The bank robbery in Memphis had occurred in March 1963, and the one in Chevy Chase in October 1963—one, just before the robbery in the instant case, and one, just afterward.

Appellant defendant Peacock was indicted in this case on June 24, 1965, nearly two years after the robbery; and appellant defendant Freeman was likewise indicted at the same time.

How the FBI arrived at the conclusion that the two appellant defendants were implicated in the bank robbery does not appear. It may have been that the fact that Peacock had been indicted in Tennessee for a bank robbery shortly before [994]*994the one in the instant case, and had been indicted for another bank robbery in Maryland shortly after, and had pleaded guilty in both cases, led the FBI to an investigation as to whether he might be guilty of robbing this bank in East Cleveland, Ohio.

In 1963, Peacock lived in Louisville, Kentucky, just south of East Cleveland, Ohio, and north of Memphis, Tennessee. Moreover, Peacock was known to Special Agent Robert Domalewski in Louisville, in 1963. Peacock, at that time, owned a 1963 green Corvair with Kentucky license plates. Agent Domalewski testified that he had seen Peacock’s green Corvair, on a number of different occasions, in Louisville in 1963, and had seen this car parked in the driveway at Peacock’s home in that city.

It appears, then, according to the Government, that a green Corvair with Kentucky license plates, and a red Cor-vair with Maryland license plates were involved in this robbery. This, at first, seems somewhat confusing; but it is clarified when it is remembered that the green Corvair was a Kentucky car owned by appellant Peacock, and the red Cor-vair was the getaway car which, as hereafter appears, was stolen in Virginia. Why a getaway car used in a robbery in Cleveland, Ohio, should be stolen and brought all the way from Virginia for that purpose is not necessary to explain. But the fact that one of the robbers was seen in Ohio, and in Virginia, and that a Corvair car was used in the getaway suggests that the driver of the Kentucky Corvair picked up the Corvair in Virginia because he was accustomed to driving that make of car, and could more easily and confidently use it in a crime which required speed and maneuverability in a quick holdup and a quick getaway.

Lois MaeNeil testified that she met defendant Peacock in Arlington, Virginia, in late June 1963; that she was introduced to him, in her own home, by a friend, Joan Maier; that Peacock drove a green Corvair, and was staying at the Clarendon Motel, about five blocks from where the red Corvair getaway car was stolen; that she dated a man named Louis Snowden, who was with Peacock; that she saw Peacock several times between June and October 1963, and that Peacock introduced her to defendant Freeman in Arlington in October 1963.

With regard to the Clarendon Motel in Arlington, the owner produced business records showing registration at his motel of one “Harold Jackson” on June 26, and, further, that this man had checked out of the Clarendon Motel by noon on June 28,1963, shortly after Mr. Murphy’s red Corvair had been stolen. The owner of the motel further testified that “Harold Jackson” at the time he stayed at the Clarendon Motel, was driving Peacock’s car with its 1963 Kentucky license, J 50-940.

It may have been that after Special Agent Walsh found the red Corvair, which had been stolen in Arlington, the FBI conducted an investigation there and found that Peacock’s car was in that city at the time the Murphy car was stolen; that various people there had known Peacock, and that they had been introduced to defendant Freeman by Peacock. It is also reasonable to suppose that the FBI figured, after Peacock had pleaded guilty to robbing a bank in Chevy Chase just before the robbery in East Cleveland and in Memphis, just afterward, that he was a likely suspect as one of the robbers of the East Cleveland Bank; and since Special Agent Domalewski had known Peacock in Louisville in 1963, and Peacock was known to have a green Corvair with Kentucky license plates, they concluded that the use of this ear at the time of the robbery in East Cleveland, Ohio, should be investigated. Whatever the fact, the FBI traced, by the record of a Standard Oil Company credit card, the use and route of the Peacock car during the critical periods. They found by such credit-card purchases of oil and gas that the Peacock car had been driven from Lexington, Virginia, on June 28, 1963, (the date when the red Corvair had been stolen) to Charleston, West Virginia; that on June 30, 1963, the car had been [995]*995driven from Charleston to Cincinnati, Ohio; that on July 2, 1963, it had been driven from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Louisville; that there were three trips made from Louisville to Cleveland, Ohio, on July 4, July 12, and July 17, 1963, the day before the bank robbery at East Cleveland. All of the purchases made with the Standard Oil credit card were for the green Corvair with Kentucky license plates, which was owned by Peacock.

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Bluebook (online)
400 F.2d 992, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-david-lee-peacock-united-states-of-america-v-william-lee-ca6-1969.