United States v. Eddie David Cox

567 F.2d 930, 1977 U.S. App. LEXIS 5843
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
DecidedNovember 30, 1977
Docket74-1867 and 77-1174
StatusPublished
Cited by21 cases

This text of 567 F.2d 930 (United States v. Eddie David Cox) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Tenth 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. Eddie David Cox, 567 F.2d 930, 1977 U.S. App. LEXIS 5843 (10th Cir. 1977).

Opinion

WILLIAM E. DOYLE, Circuit Judge.

Appellant filed a motion for new trial pursuant to Rule 33 of the Rules of Criminal Procedure in which he alleged the presence of newly discovered evidence. There was then pending a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255. Both of these motions were denied and are consolidated in the present appeal.

The cause was before this court previously on appeal from the conviction. See United States v. Cox, 449 F.2d 679 (10th Cir. 1971), cert. denied, 406 U.S. 934, 92 S.Ct. 1783, 32 L.Ed.2d 136. A companion case was decided in the Eighth Circuit, the case of United States v. Cox, 462 F.2d 1293 (8th Cir. 1972), cert. denied, 417 U.S. 918, 94 S.Ct. 2623, 41 L.Ed.2d 223. We will refer to both of these decisions in the present opinion.

The appellant is now serving a 20-year sentence for bank robbery growing out of the case that was tried in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas and reviewed here. Evidence in that case was obtained from a wiretap which was formally authorized by the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri in connection with a narcotics investigation. In the course of that wiretap it was learned that there was an impending bank robbery of a Kansas City, Kansas bank. Subsequently, the United States made a request for ancillary use of the wiretap evidence in the bank robbery trial.

I.

Appellant first objects to the ancillary use of the wiretap evidence.

18 U.S.C. § 2517(5) provides that when, during an authorized wiretap, communications relating to crimes other than those specified in the authorization are intercepted; such evidence may be used in criminal or grand jury proceedings when authorized by a judge who finds “on subsequent application that the contents were otherwise intercepted in accordance with the provisions of this chapter.” Such application is to be made “as soon as practicable.”

It is now contended that the district court’s denial of the § 2255 motion predicated on the disclosure of some of the wiretap evidence to the grand jury prior to authorization by a judge for use of this evidence was error. The argument is that *932 the timing is at variance with the statutory requirement “as soon as practicable.” This contention was not raised in the appeal of the conviction herein. In fact, we noted in our opinion that the issue of timeliness of the application was not raised. See 449 F.2d at 681.

Davis v. United States, 411 U.S. 233, 93 S.Ct. 1577, 36 L.Ed.2d 216 (1973) held that even a constitutional challenge to grand jury proceedings is waived under Fed.R.Crim.Proc. 12(b)(2) if not raised before trial, and cannot then later be raised on a § 2255 motion. United States v. Rabstein, 554 F.2d 190 (5th Cir. 1977) said specifically that a claim that evidence had been introduced before the grand jury in violation of § 2517(5) was waived if not raised before trial. Thus Cox cannot raise these matters now. Section 2255 is not available to test the legality of matters which should have been raised on appeal. Porth v. Templar, 453 F.2d 330 (10th Cir. 1971).

II.

The next argument is that the district court erred in refusing to grant relief as a result of the government’s failure to minimize interceptions in the wiretap in accordance with 18 U.S.C. § 2518(5). The trial court noted that the Eighth Circuit had considered this question on appeal and had resolved it contrary to the contention of Cox. It agreed with the decision of the Eighth Circuit that there was no failure here to minimize.

However, appellant argues that there has been a change in the law since the affirmance by the Eighth Circuit of Cox’s conviction there. He points to United States v. Losing, 539 F.2d 1174 (8th Cir. 1976), in which the Eighth Circuit remanded for an evidentiary hearing on the issue of minimization.

Appellant also relies on United States v. Giordano, 416 U.S. 505, 94 S.Ct. 1820, 40 L.Ed.2d 341 (1974), wherein the Supreme Court said:

We think Congress intended to require suppression where there is failure' to satisfy any of those statutory requirements that directly and substantially implement the congressional intention to limit the use of intercept procedures to those situations clearly calling for the employment of this extraordinary investigative device. Id. at 527, 94 S.Ct. at 1832.

In the Eighth Circuit Cox case, United States v. Cox, supra, it was concluded that the minimization requirement was “a command to limit surveillance as much as possible under the circumstances.” Id. at 1300. The Eighth Circuit also held that minimization is to be considered on a case by case basis and said that when:

the investigation is of an organized criminal conspiracy conversing in a colloquial code, surveillance of most of the telephone calls made during several days does not constitute a failure to minimize

The nature and character of the conversations which were monitored were considered significant. The Eighth Circuit recognized that there was extensive eavesdropping, but the great caution of the district court judge in originally authorizing and supervising the wiretapping was also noted, and the court said that a holding of overbreadth of the wiretapping would render it impossible to use electronic surveillance to investigate organized crime. Also, the court concluded that the failure to minimize would not invariably compel suppression of evidence which was clearly within the scope of the order.

We have examined United States v. Scully, 546 F.2d 255 (9th Cir. 1976), vacated on other grounds, 430 U.S. 902, 97 S.Ct. 1168, 51 L.Ed.2d 578 (1977), and United States v. Giordano, supra. We have also considered United States v. Losing, 539 F.2d 1174 (8th Cir. 1976). In our view it is not contra to the Cox decision.

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Bluebook (online)
567 F.2d 930, 1977 U.S. App. LEXIS 5843, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-eddie-david-cox-ca10-1977.