United States v. Furtney

351 F. Supp. 671, 1972 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11219
CourtDistrict Court, W.D. Pennsylvania
DecidedNovember 9, 1972
DocketCrim. A. No. 69-141
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 351 F. Supp. 671 (United States v. Furtney) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Furtney, 351 F. Supp. 671, 1972 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11219 (W.D. Pa. 1972).

Opinion

OPINION AND ORDER

MARSH, Chief Judge.

On June 18, 1969, the defendant, Furtney, was charged in a two-count indictment with (1) passing and uttering a counterfeit $20 bill to and upon the Staircase Bar in Pittsburgh, and (2) with possessing and concealing a counterfeit $20 bill with intent to defraud. Title 18 U.S.C. § 472.

The case was tried by the Honorable John W. Delehant1 and a jury. The defendant was convicted of Count 1 on November 25, 1969. Upon appeal, 3 Cir., 454 F.2d 1, the case was remanded for a Wade hearing.2 See: United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 218, 87 S.Ct. 1926, 18 L.Ed.2d 1149 (1967).

On November 20, 1969, the trial judge held a suppression hearing prior to the selection of the jury. At this hearing the $20 bill involved in Count 2 was suppressed. The prosecution was thus deprived of important evidence of the defendant’s guilty intent with respect to the $20 bill previously passed to the bartender as charged in Count 1. Because of the adverse ruling, Count 2 was dismissed by the prosecution.

After the ease was called, but prior to the selection of the jury, two prospective government identification witnesses, John Tomsic and his wife, Katherine, were conducted by the assistant United States attorney assigned to prosecute the case, along with Robert Foster, the secret service agent in charge of the investigation, from the sixth floor of the Courthouse where the United States attorneys’ offices are located to Judge Delehant’s courtroom on the ninth floor. In the corridor outside the courtroom about three women, in addition to Mrs. Tomsic, and about 10 men, including the defendant, were standing around. None of the men wore police uniforms. Mr. Tomsic identified the defendant to the assistant and the agent as the man who had passed a counterfeit $20 bill to him on January 6, 1969. Mrs. Tomsic did not recognize the defendant.

[673]*673When the foregoing facts were brought to the attention of the defendant’s counsel by the assistant, the former moved the court to conduct a pretrial Wade hearing to determine whether or not there was an unconstitutional confrontation between Mr. Tomsie and the defendant, and, if so, to determine if his prospective in-court identification of the defendant, intended to help establish the latter’s guilty intent, should be suppressed. The court denied the motion.

At the trial, Mr. Tomsie testified that the defendant was the man who had entered his store in Wickliff,- Ohio, and passed a counterfeit $20 bill on January 6, 1969. A Mr. Cartwright also presented testimony tending to prove the defendant’s guilty intent.

After hearing the evidence on the pretrial confrontation in the corridor outside the courtroom, we find the following facts:

The authorities in charge of the prosecution did not intentionally arrange this pretrial confrontation between the Tomsics and the defendant in the corridor outside Judge Delehant’s courtroom; they did nothing to focus the attention of Mr. and Mrs. Tomsie on the defendant as the person to be identified; they did not anticipate that the Tomsics would encounter the defendant in the corridor. We find that Mr. Tomsic’s identification of the defendant in the corridor was entirely spontaneous. Therefore, it is our opinion that defendant’s Sixth Amendment rights were not violated. The chance encounter between Tomsie and the defendant was not an illegal lineup in violation of the Wade rule; it was not a critical confrontation intentionally arranged by the prosecuting authorities.

Further, upon due consideration of the totality of the circumstances surrounding this chance observation, we find it was not so unnecessarily suggestive and conducive to irreparable mistaken identification that it infringed upon defendant’s right to due process. Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 87 S.Ct. 1967, 18 L.Ed.2d 1199 (1967); see: United States of America ex rel. Riffert v. Rundle, 464 F.2d 1348 (3d Cir. 1972); United States v. Hardy, 448 F.2d 423 (3d Cir. 1971).

Should the reviewing authorities disagree with our finding that the encounter was not a critical confrontation, we find the following additional facts from the evidence adduced at the hearing:

On January 6, 1969, a man who Mr. Tomsie identified at trial as the defendant entered the Tomsie store in the daytime; that Tomsie had never seen him before; that this man exclaimed in a loud voice, “hello there”, looked around, purchased a pack of cigarettes, and handed Tomsie a $20 bill after which Tomsie gave him the change. Tomsie observed this customer for about three to four minutes in adequate light. Shortly after this customer left the store, an employee of a drug store next door arrived and inquired if Tomsie had just taken a $20 bill. Upon receiving an affirmative answer, he informed Tomsie that it was counterfeit. Tomsie promptly reported the matter to the police. There was a strong likelihood that this occurrence would have impressed the appearance of the culprit upon Mr. Tom-sic’s memory. The next day the Tom-sics were interviewed by special secret service agent Fred Backstrum 3 and they described the culprit, inter alia, as a “man in his early 20’s, dark complexion, well built.”4

Thus, in any event, we find as a fact that Mr. Tomsie had an independent source for his in-court identification of the defendant as the culprit at the trial and at the remanded hearing untainted by the pretrial confrontation in the corridor.

[674]*674 Photographic Identification

At the hearing held pursuant to the remand, the defendant unexpectedly brought out that the Tomsics, prior to the trial, identified a photograph of the defendant as the culprit, which photograph was shown to them by Agent Baekstrum as part of his investigation of the Ohio offenses. The defendant contends that this photographic identification violated the defendant’s right to due process.

The government objected to the relevancy of the evidence concerning the photographic identification on the grounds that the defense did not elicit this fact by cross-examination of Mr. Tomsic at the trial; that the evidence at the hearing established that Tomsic made his identification from a source independent of the photograph; and that this issue is beyond the scope of the remand.

The defendant claims that this issue would have been developed at the Wade hearing had the trial judge granted it. The defendant contends that the evidence adduced at the remand hearing shows that this photographic identification was so impermissibly suggestive as to give rise to a very substantial likelihood of irreparable misidentification, and hence he must be granted a new trial. He cites United States v. Shannon, 424 F.2d 476, 477 (3d Cir. 1970).

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365 F. Supp. 747 (E.D. Pennsylvania, 1973)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
351 F. Supp. 671, 1972 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 11219, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-furtney-pawd-1972.