United States v. Marvin Moses

234 F.2d 124, 1956 U.S. App. LEXIS 3676
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedJune 8, 1956
Docket19-1480
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 234 F.2d 124 (United States v. Marvin Moses) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Seventh 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. Marvin Moses, 234 F.2d 124, 1956 U.S. App. LEXIS 3676 (7th Cir. 1956).

Opinion

SWAIM, Circuit Judge.

The appellant was convicted by the court below, sitting without a jury, under two counts, of purchasing narcotic drugs not in stamped packages, 26 U.S.C.A. § 2553(a), and receiving, concealing, etc., narcotics, knowing them to have been imported contrary to law, 21 U.S.C.A. § 174. Appellant argues that his conviction should be reversed because it was obtained on the basis of evidence taken from his car by the Chicago city police without a warrant.

The appellant was driving his car north on Greenwood Street in Chicago at 3:30 in the afternoon. At 45th Street he passed three members of the Chicago city police robbery detail who were driving south on Greenwood. The officers were in uniform and driving a squad car. They testified that the appellant put his hand up as they passed him so that they could not see his face. This act plus what the officers could see of the appellant made them think that he was a man wanted for several robberies in that neighborhood, and they turned around and followed appellant’s car. Within half a block appellant parked and the officers pulled up behind him.

One of the officers searched the passenger section of appellant’s car but apparently found nothing. The officer then asked the appellant to open the trunk. Appellant offered to give the keys to the officer but at the officer’s insistence appellant opened the trunk himself. In the trunk the police found 82.19 ounces of what the appellant told them was heroin.

The officers arrested the appellant and took him to their immediate superior, the head of the robbery detail, who told them to deliver appellant to the Chicago Narcotics Squad. The case was then taken over by federal narcotics agents, and the appellant tried in federal court. The errors which the appellant urges before us all concern the admissibility of the evidence seized by Chicago police without a warrant. A timely motion was made that the evidence be suppressed. After a hearing by the trial court the motion was denied. This denial plus the court’s refusal to grant a judgment of acquittal for the same grounds, are the errors cited.

In the performance of their duty to support and enforce the Constitution of the United States the federal courts have refused to admit evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment prohibition against “unreasonable searches and seizures”. Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 34 S.Ct. 341, 343, 58 L.Ed. 652. The Fourth Amendment, however, applies only to the actions of officers of the federal government and is not applicable to the actions of state officials. Feldman v. United States, 322 U.S. 487, 64 S.Ct. 1082, 88 L.Ed. 1408. Since an unreasonable search and seizure by a state official does not violate the Fourth Amendment, federal courts have held that their duty to enforce the Constitution neither necessitates nor justifies the exclusion of evidence so obtained by state officials. Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. at page 398, 34 S.Ct. at page 346.

Cases arose in which state or municipal officers made an unreasonable search with which federal officers were so connected as to cause the court to hold that *126 officers of the United States Government had taken part in the search and seizure. In such a case, of course, the Fourth Amendment had been violated, and under the Weeks case, the evidence had to be suppressed. However, courts have not been in complete agreement as to just how closely federal officers have to be connected with the search and seizure before the Fourth Amendment is violated.

The rule was first stated in Byars v. United States, 273 U.S. 28, 33, 47 S.Ct. 248, 250, 71 L.Ed. 520:

“We do not question the right of the federal government to avail itself of evidence improperly seized by state officers operating entirely upon their own account. But the rule is otherwise when the federal government itself, through its agents acting as such, participates- in the wrongful search and seizure.” (Emphasis added.)

In the Byars case a federal prohibition ag.ent accompanied city police during an illegal search that uncovered counterfeit federal alcohol tax stamps. The key to the decision as stated by the Court was the participation of a federal agent in the illegal search. The Byars rule was broadened by Gambino v. United States, 275 U.S. 310, 48 S.Ct. 137, 72 L.Ed. 293. In Gambino New York state police illegally searched Gambino’s car and found liquor which was turned over, with Gam-bino, to federal prohibition agents. The Court ordered that the evidence be suppressed because it was obvious that the state police had acted “solely for the purpose of aiding the United States in the enforcement of its laws.” Gambino v. United States, 275 U.S. 310, 317, 48 S.Ct. 137, 139.

The Courts of Appeals quickly expanded the rule still further. In Fowler v. United States, 7 Cir., 62 F.2d 656, this court directed the suppression of evidence that was obtained by state officers not solely to enforce federal law (the Gambino test) but that was obtained by a city “booze squad” which had an agreement with federal prohibition officers that the United States would have first opportunity to try prisoners under the federal law. Those not prosecuted by the United States Attorney were tried by the state. This court found the agreement sufficient to constitute a delegation of authority to state officers to search and arrest for the federal government, or a ratification by federal authority of the illegal acts of state officers. But the Gambino rule, already extended by Fowler v. United States, supra, was to undergo still further expansion.

Sutherland v. United States, 4 Cir., 92 F.2d 305, marks the high point in our courts’ willingness to enforce federal responsibility for the illegal acts of state officials. In Sutherland the state alcoholic beverage control board obtained an invalid warrant to search the defendant’s home. Under the supposed authority of this warrant a state investigator searched the house in search of alcohol. He found it, and the defendant was turned over to the federal government for prosecution. The facts do not differ greatly from those in the Fowler ease, supra, but the language of the court was broader in directing suppression of the evidence. In Sutherland the court held that “general cooperation” between state and federal officials was enough to justify finding federal action in an illegal search by state officers; that no actual agreement was necessary if there was “general cooperation” between the federal officers and the state officers, and the federal officers in fact adopted the prosecution which the state officers had begun as a result of their illegal search.

It should be noted that the decisions most liberal in holding unreasonable searches and seizures by state officers to be violations of the Fourth Amendment were those involving violations of the prohibition law.

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Bluebook (online)
234 F.2d 124, 1956 U.S. App. LEXIS 3676, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-marvin-moses-ca7-1956.