United States v. Williams

230 F. Supp. 47, 1961 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3034
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Tennessee
DecidedDecember 18, 1961
DocketCrim. No. 16497
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 230 F. Supp. 47 (United States v. Williams) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Tennessee primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Williams, 230 F. Supp. 47, 1961 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3034 (E.D. Tenn. 1961).

Opinion

ROBERT L. TAYLOR, Chief Judge.

This case is again before the Court on defendant’s motion to suppress evidence obtained by certain officers of the City of Knoxville and County of Knox, Tennessee, on June 30,1959 when he was arrested by these officers in Knox County, Tennessee.

The motion is based upon the proposition that the officers violated defendant’s constitutional rights, as established both in the Constitution of the State of Tennessee and in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the Constitution of the United States, by arresting defendant and taking from his automobile several gallons of moonshine whiskey.

At the time the first motion was heard, the use of evidence in the Federal Court obtained by state officers was not barred even though such evidence was obtained in violation of the accused’s constitutional rights. This principle was announced in the case of Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 398, 34 S.Ct. 341, 58 L.Ed. 652, and Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 U.S. 465, 41 S.Ct. 574, 65 L.Ed. 1048, and followed by our Sixth Circuit in the cases of Collins v. United States, 230 F.2d 424, (C.A. 6), Ford v. United States, 234 F.2d 835, 837, and Graham v. United States, 257 F.2d 724, 725.

This Court overruled the defendant’s motion at a former term of the court and thereafter a trial followed when he was found guilty by a jury. Defendant appealed from the verdict of the jury, and pending the appeal the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 80 S.Ct. 1437, 4 L.Ed.2d 1669, modified its ruling in the Weeks v. United States and Burdeau v. McDowell, supra, cases by holding that [e]vidence obtained by state officers during a search which, if conducted by federal officers, would have violated the defendant’s immunity from unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment [was] inadmissible in a federal trial, even when there was no participation by federal officers in the search and seizure.

[49]*49The Government relied upon the rulings in the Weeks and Burdeau cases in the trial on the first motion. Defendant proceeded on the theory that because of a Knoxville ordinance requiring the city policemen to turn over all moonshine whiskey eases to federal officers, the ordinance made federal officers participants in all arrests and searches and seizures involving moonshine whiskey, and that what was done in this case by the city officers was chargeable to the federal officers.

This Court took a contrary view. The Court relied upon the Weeks and Burdeau cases, supra, to support its view in overruling the motion to suppress.

Because of the change in the law with respect to search and seizure, our Sixth Circuit, pursuant to a written opinion filed on December 20, 1960, 282 F.2d 940, remanded the case to this Court with directions to make findings of fact and conclusions of law on “the factual circumstances leading up to the arrest of appellant, about which the parties are apparently not in accord, [and which] were not developed in detail [in the first trial].” The Court of Appeals stated that the record “does not contain findings which are necessary in order for this Court to pass on the legality of the arrest and the search.” The Court also stated that “[u]nder the circumstances, appellant’s motion to suppress should be reconsidered by the District Judge, with permission to both parties to introduce additional evidence pertaining to the arrest and search, followed by findings of fact and conclusions of law by the District Judge with respect thereto.”

This Court has now heard additional evidence from the officers who made the arrest of defendant and now makes the following findings of fact and conclusions of law:

Robert F. Poynter, a Knoxville policeman, was assigned to the Vine Street, Willow Street, Magnolia Avenue and Jackson Street area on a patrol beat to check business houses at the time of the occurrences referred to herein. His duties required patrolling of the area in the vicinity of Willow and Patton Streets, along with Policeman Brooks, in which area many break-ins had occurred and at that time the policemen were investigating all strange cars in the area.

In the early morning of June 30, 1959, between 4:30 and 5:00 a. m., a strange ear which, as later developed, was driven by the defendant and occupied by a boy by the name of Evans, was moving west on Willow Street. This car turned south on Patton Street; Officer Brooks pulled up behind him and turned the spotlight on his car, but the car began to move; thereafter the officer turned the siren on but the car continued to travel at a fast rate south on Patton, east on Nelson, back south on Rocky Alley, and then went west on Vine Street and back to Patton and north on Patton and down to Jackson, east on Jackson and on through the Burlington section onto the Asheville Highway in an easterly direction and turned off of the Asheville Highway after it had gone some distance, and after turning off of the highway it later turned right at the Carter School Road and as it undertook to make a sharp turn at a bridge over a small stream on this road it overturned while running at a very rapid rate of speed and while being pursued by the officers. After the ear turned over, defendant and Evans came out of it and they were placed under arrest by the officers.

About this time Officer Poynter left the place of the wreck and radioed for a wrecker, and upon his return to the defendant’s car the officers were unloading the whiskey that was in the trunk of this car. The wreck had caused the trunk of the car to come open and the officers observed the cartons of whiskey in the trunk.

As previously indicated, when the spotlight was first turned onto defendant’s car he began to drive very rapidly and reached speeds as high as 90 miles or more per hour. He ran as high as 60 to 65 miles an hour around sharp curves in the City of Knoxville at places where the [50]*50speed limit was 30 miles an hour. He ran the stop sign at Patton and Jackson Streets, at Bell Avenue and McCalla Avenue, and possibly Bertrand and McCalla. He drove some 10 to 12 miles from the place where he was first observed by the officers to the place of the accident. He drove about one-half mile off of the Asheville Highway before his car turned over. He was charged by the city officers with speeding and failing to stop at stop signs and reckless driving and fined $150.00 by the City Court.

The proof indicates, and the Court finds, that Officer Poynter, at the time of defendant’s arrest, was not only a policeman for the City of Knoxville but also a deputy sheriff of Knox County. The proof is silent as to whether the other policemen who participated in the arrest were also deputy sheriffs of Knox County.

The officers had no information about defendant’s car before they flashed their spotlight on it.

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Related

United States v. Garner
326 F. Supp. 811 (E.D. Tennessee, 1970)
Liming v. State
417 S.W.2d 769 (Tennessee Supreme Court, 1967)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
230 F. Supp. 47, 1961 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3034, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-williams-tned-1961.