United States v. Tyrone Wallace

326 F.3d 881, 2003 U.S. App. LEXIS 7145, 2003 WL 1878731
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
DecidedApril 16, 2003
Docket02-2037
StatusPublished
Cited by26 cases

This text of 326 F.3d 881 (United States v. Tyrone Wallace) 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. Tyrone Wallace, 326 F.3d 881, 2003 U.S. App. LEXIS 7145, 2003 WL 1878731 (7th Cir. 2003).

Opinion

KANNE, Circuit Judge.

A jury convicted Tyrone Wallace of being a felon in possession of a firearm while having three prior violent felony convictions. The district court sentenced him to 300 months imprisonment for the offense. In this appeal he raises three issues: (1) that the district court erred in ordering him to turn over to the government a prior statement of a defense witness, (2) that his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial was violated, and (3) that the district court wrongly applied the armed-career-criminal statute to enhance his sentence. We reject each claim and affirm both his conviction and sentence.

I. History

The charge in this case arose out of an incident that occurred at the Chicago apartment of Carolyn Kirkman on the night of April 26, 1999. Wallace spent much of that day in and around Kirkman’s apartment. The two had four children together, and Wallace made frequent visits to the apartment, but he did not five there. Around 10:00 p.m. on the evening of the 26th, Kirkman left the apartment for work and Wallace stayed behind. At some point after Kirkman left, Wallace went on a walk through the neighborhood and encountered Ruby West, who was pregnant at the time. He invited West back to Kirkman’s apartment to watch videotapes.

When they reached the back porch of the Kirkman’s apartment, Wallace retrieved a gun from above the door and pointed it at West’s head. He threatened to shoot her in the abdomen and kill her baby unless she performed oral sex on him. West began to comply with the demand, when one of Kirkman’s children, from inside the apartment, told Wallace that he was wanted on the telephone.

Wallace ordered West to go with him into the apartment. While Wallace was on the phone, or soon after, West was able to escape. When she got out of the apartment, she spotted two police officers and ran toward them yelling that Wallace had a gun. Officers Grassi and Dougherty spoke briefly with West and then went to the apartment and knocked on the door." Wallace opened the door and let them inside. Once the officers were inside the apartment, Wallace became belligerent, and the police were forced to place him in handcuffs. After restraining Wallace, Officer Dougherty conducted a visual sweep of the apartment. He noticed a gun holster on the kitchen window sill, and while going to retrieve the holster, he spotted a nine-millimeter pistol lying on the kitchen floor. Both items were seized, and the officers placed Wallace under arrest. He was charged by the State of Illinois for possession of the pistol, but the State did not proceed with that charge.

Nearly a year later, on March 6, 2001, a federal grand jury returned a one-count indictment charging Wallace with being a felon in possession of a firearm at a time *884 when he had three previous convictions for violent felonies, in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g) and 924(e)(1) (2003). On October 11, 2001, following a two-day trial, the jury convicted him, and he was sentenced to 300 months imprisonment.

II. Analysis

A. Disclosure of Defense Investigator’s Report

Before trial, Wallace moved to suppress the admission of the pistol into evidence on the ground that the warrantless search of the apartment violated the Fourth Amendment. The government argued that Wallace lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in the apartment because it was Kirkman’s residence, not his. At the beginning of the suppression hearing, the government informed the district court that if the defendant called Kirkman to testify as a witness, it would request a copy of a defense investigator’s report of a prior interview with Kirkman in which she discussed, among other things, the frequency of Wallace’s visits to the apartment. Wallace objected, arguing only that there was no rule requiring reciprocal discovery or disclosure of witness statements by the defense in a criminal case. The court disagreed and ordered that after Kirkman testified, the investigator’s report must be turned over to the government. The government did not use the report at the suppression hearing. At trial, however, the government did use it to impeach Kirkman when her testimony conflicted with statements recorded in the investigator’s report.

Wallace now contends that the district court erred in ordering him to disclose the investigator’s report and that this error denied him a fair trial. As he did in the district court, Wallace insists that there is no rule of reciprocal discovery of defense witness statements in criminal cases. He is wrong, of course. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 26.2(a) provides:

After a witness other than the defendant has testified on direct examination, the court, on motion of a party who did not call the witness, must order an attorney for the government or the defendant and the defendant’s attorney to produce, for the examination and use of the moving party, any statement of the witness that is in their possession and that relates to the subject matter of the witness’s testimony.

Fed. R. CRIM. P. 26.2(a) (emphasis added).

Wallace does not argue that Rule 26.2 is inapplicable to this case; indeed, he does not cite or even mention Rule 26.2 at all. In reviewing the record, we find no reason why Rule 26.2 would not require Wallace to disclose the report. Subsection (g) of the rule makes clear that it applies in suppression hearings. Fed. R. Crim. P. 26.2(g). Further, it is apparent that the defense investigator’s report qualifies as a “statement” of the witness under the definition of that term provided in subsection (f)(2) of the rule. 1

Instead of discussing Rule 26.2, Wallace contends that requiring reciprocal discovery of defense witness statements violates *885 his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. But he fails to acknowledge that this argument was rejected by a unanimous Supreme Court in United States v. Nobles, 422 U.S. 225, 234, 240, 95 S.Ct. 2160, 45 L.Ed.2d 141 (1975). In Nobles, the Court held that ordering a defendant to turn over a defense investigator’s report of interviews with witnesses did not violate the Fifth Amendment because it was not equivalent to compelling information from the defendant. Id. at 234, 95 S.Ct. 2160. And the Court held that such an order did not violate the Sixth Amendment because there was no intrusion on the attorney-client relationship that impaired counsel’s ability to provide effective representation. Id. at 240, 95 S.Ct. 2160. Indeed, Nobles was a basis on which Rule 26.2 was added to the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. See Fed R. CRIM. P. 26.2 advisory committee’s note.

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Bluebook (online)
326 F.3d 881, 2003 U.S. App. LEXIS 7145, 2003 WL 1878731, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-tyrone-wallace-ca7-2003.