Opinion ID: 179299
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Robbery, the Chase, and the Physical Evidence

Text: At 1:36 p.m. on November 7, 2006, a masked man carrying a pistol-grip shotgun robbed the MidAmerican Bank and Trust in Leavenworth, Kansas. The robber had entered through a rear door, hurried to the teller station, and demanded money from teller Debbie Smith. Smith gave him money from several different drawers, including marked bills with prerecorded serial numbers. The robber put the money in a white plastic bag and left through the rear door. He walked briskly to a nearby parking lot, got in a car, and drove away. Mary Garrison, who worked in a neighboring office building, was walking to her car to get a bottle of water when she noticed a white male sitting alone in the passenger seat of a four-door bluish gray car. She then saw a taller white male wearing dark clothing run to the car, get into the driver seat, and speed away. When the police arrived a a minute or two later, she described the car and told them the direction in which it had driven off. Trial Tr., Doc. 150 at 125. At 1:41 p.m. the Lansing, Kansas, Police Department sent out an alert notifying officers of the bank robbery and describing the suspect vehicle as a four-door blue vehicle occupied by two white males. Id. at 136. At 1:56 p.m., 20 minutes after the robbery, Manuel Olmos, a Lansing police officer, was driving in his marked patrol car when he saw a blue sedan with two white males coming toward him. He made eye contact with its occupants, and his eyes and theirs just fixated on each other and ... we just kept looking at each other... as we passed each other. Id. at 141. The officer turned his car around and began to follow the vehicle. A chase ensued, with speeds exceeding 100 miles per hour. The blue sedan ran stop signs, sped through intersections, drove in emergency lanes to get around other vehicles, and passed a funeral procession at a high rate of speed. Eventually, the blue sedan came to a stop in a parking lot in Kansas City, Kansas, after officers placed stop sticks in the road to deflate the car's tires. Id. at 191. The vehicle's occupants were arrested at gunpoint. Mr. Hall was the driver and James Morrison was the passenger. The blue sedan was registered to Mr. Hall. Mr. Hall was clothed almost entirely in Harley-Davidson apparel; he was wearing a Harley-Davidson shirt, a pair of Harley-Davidson jeans, and black Harley-Davidson zip-up boots with a lace on top. He was also wearing a black belt with a large Harley-Davidson silver buckle on which a gold-colored eagle was depicted. Several items related to the robbery were recovered along a rural gravel road on the route of the chase. One of the pursuing officers had noticed dark clothing lying by the side of the road and radioed its location. Another officer searched the area and found a black hooded sweatshirt and a pair of brown gloves. Farther up the road, members of a Westar Energy crew installing overhead power lines had seen police cars pursuing a blue sedan. As the sedan raced by, the crew foreman observed that the passenger looked like he was changing his shirt or something he was, kind of humped in the seat, his arms were like somebody was taking off a shirt or putting one on. Id. at 215. A crew member working in an aerial bucket when the sedan passed saw a black object fly out of the passenger-side window. Police searched the area and recovered a ski mask. A forensic scientist was able to obtain a DNA profile from the mask that was consistent with Mr. Hall's DNA. Only 1 in 35,160 people would have a matching profile. Another officer searching along the gravel road found a white plastic bag containing $14,440, including the marked bills from the bank. (A later audit of the teller's drawer showed that $14,541 had been taken.) On the bag was the Harley-Davidson logo and the address of a Harley-Davidson store in Blue Springs, Missouri. The day after the robbery, police officers discovered a dark, pump-action shotgun with a pistol grip in a roadside ditch by the gravel road. After arresting Mr. Hall, officers searched his car and found in the back seat a receipt from a Wal-Mart in Lee's Summit, Missouri. The receipt showed that at 11:14 p.m. on November 6, 2006, the night before the robbery, someone had purchased a three-hole mask, cigarettes, and a pair of gloves. Surveillance footage from the store showed Morrison and Mr. Hall arriving at the Wal-Mart in the blue sedan at 10:50 p.m., both men entering and exiting the store, and Morrison purchasing the items listed on the receipt. Morrison was wearing a distinctive black-and-orange jacket, which police officers found in the back seat of Mr. Hall's car. Officers also obtained surveillance tapes from the bank. One showed that Morrison had conducted a transaction at Smith's teller station only six minutes before the robbery. Morrison was wearing a Harley-Davidson hat.