Opinion ID: 717992
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Armed Bank Robbery

Text: 17 Glover was convicted as a principal for aiding and abetting another in committing an armed robbery. A conviction of armed bank robbery under 18 U.S.C. § 2113(d) requires that the defendant committed an unarmed bank robbery in violation of § 2113(a) and also committed the aggravating behavior--endangering the life of any person by the use of a dangerous weapon or device--as described in § 2113(d). To be liable as a principal for helping another to commit a crime, the defendant must knowingly and intentionally help the principal in every essential element of the crime. Dinkane, 17 F.3d at 1196. The defendant must give his assistance during the commission of the crime. Id. 18 Dinkane sets out the government's burden of proof in securing a conviction of a getaway car driver for aiding and abetting an armed bank robbery: 19 The government must show that the defendant knowingly and intentionally aided the commission of the aggravating element: assaulting a person or putting a life in jeopardy before or during the commission of that aggravating element. If the aiding and abetting of the underlying offense occurs only after the aggravating use of a dangerous weapon has ended, the defendant cannot be shown to have aided and abetted an essential element of armed bank robbery and therefore cannot be convicted of the greater offense. 20 Id. at 1197 (emphasis added). 21 In Dinkane, we considered the sufficiency of the evidence supporting defendant's conviction of aiding and abetting an armed bank robbery for his role as a getaway driver. We vacated the conviction, holding that the government failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant helped in the principals' use of dangerous weapons during the robbery. We found that [t]here was no evidence that prior to the robbery [the defendant] Dinkane knew that the principals had and intended to use weapons. Id. 1 22 Relevant to our analysis in Dinkane was the fact that the jury received the following instruction, which the government later conceded was incorrect: The government is not required to show that the defendant actually knew that a dangerous weapon would be used. Id. We concluded that no properly instructed jury could have reasonably found the defendant guilty of armed bank robbery. Id. 23 On the day of the robbery, Turpitt told the police that the gun found in her house did not belong to her son. At trial, she testified for the government and stated that she later learned that her son did own that gun. The jury heard this testimony and also learned of Turpitt's initial statement to the contrary. After Turpitt testified, the prosecutor argued in summation that Turpitt lied about her son owning the BB gun. 24 On appeal, the Government urges that the jury may have believed Turpitt's trial testimony about her son's ownership of the gun. Thus, the government argues, the jury may have readily concluded that Glover took the gun from his nephew's bedroom sometime before the robbery, provided it to Pedrioli to use, and returned it to the bedroom upon Glover's return to the house after the robbery. This argument is important, because it links Glover to the gun and supports the inference that Glover must have known of the gun use before or during the robbery, as required by Dinkane. 25 Glover argues that we cannot or ought not consider Turpitt's testimony about her son's owning the gun as part of the evidence used to prove Glover's knowledge of the aggravating behavior. Glover contends that after the prosecutor discredited the Turpitt testimony during closing argument, the government may not now rely on this same testimony as a basis for sustaining the jury's verdict. Glover also asserts that this Court should in any case disregard the Turpitt testimony as inherently unbelievable. 26 We first address the issue of whether and how we should consider the Turpitt testimony and then decide whether the evidence before us supports the conviction under the Dinkane standard. 27 We reject Glover's argument that we should construe the government's disparaging of the testimony as a judicial admission. Glover improperly relies on United States v. Bentson, 947 F.2d 1353, 1356 (9th Cir.1991), cert. denied, 504 U.S. 958 (1992). In Bentson, this Court found that the defendant was bound on appeal by his attorney's closing statement before the district court because that statement constituted a judicial admission. We determined that the attorney conceded that the defendant did not file valid tax returns when the attorney stated that the defense did not suggest that valid returns were filed. Id. at 1356. 28 It does not appear to us that the prosecutor's interpretation of the testimony of Ms. Turpitt and argument urging the jury to adopt this interpretation constitute a judicial admission on behalf of the government. Whatever the government's version of the testimony, the jury may still have disregarded it and believed Turpitt. 29 We also reject Glover's suggestion that we should disregard the testimony because it is inherently unbelievable. Decisions finding testimony inherently unbelievable involve testimony which is physically or logically impossible. See, e.g., United States v. Ramos-Rascon, 8 F.3d 704, 708 (9th Cir.1993) (It simply defies logic to believe that a law enforcement agent can observe the extra degree of awareness the officer described here under these circumstances.); see also United States v. Saunders, 973 F.2d 1354, 1359 (7th Cir.1992) (We must accept the evidence unless it is contrary to the laws of nature ... or is so inconsistent or improbable on its face that no reasonable fact finder could accept it.) (citations omitted). 30 If we construe Turpitt's trial testimony as contradicting an earlier statement, the reliability of her testimony is impacted. Nevertheless, the testimony is still far from preposterous and so should not be disregarded on the inherently unbelievable basis. 31 In any case, we find that Ms. Turpitt's testimony at trial was not really inconsistent. At the time Ms. Turpitt made her first statement denying knowledge of the gun, she may well not have known that her son owned the gun. Ms. Turpitt may have first learned that the gun did, in fact, belong to her son in later talking to him and so testified at trial. 32 We conclude that we may and will consider Turpitt's testimony in evaluating the sufficiency of the evidence. We also believe that the totality of the Government's evidence connected the gun to Glover and allowed the jury to conclude that he must have known about the gun's use. Two witnesses identified Glover as the driver of the getaway car from an alley near the bank. Evidence showed that the car belonged to the mother of co-defendant Pedrioli. Glover was arrested in the same car as he drove away from his sister's home. The man identified as the robber, Pedrioli, was also found in this house. Most importantly, with respect to the aiding and abetting conviction, the police found a Crossman BB pistol in the bedroom of Glover's nephew. Several witnesses identified this pistol as identical to the weapon used in the bank robbery. Glover's sister, Turpitt testified that the gun belonged to her son. In the same house, the police found almost exactly one-half of the $9870 taken in the robbery. The finding of the money at this house and especially the amount of the money are important circumstantial facts implicating Glover and also associating him with the gun. 33 Glover urges that the evidence does not exclude and even supports the conclusion that Pedrioli, rather than Glover, dropped off the gun at Glover's sister's home. 34 We acknowledge that the evidence tending to prove Glover's knowledge of the gun use does not eliminate all other alternatives. Nevertheless, the elimination of all other alternatives is not our standard for sufficiency of the evidence. See Mares, 940 F.2d at 458. The above possibilities are hypothetical exculpatory explanations which the jury is under no duty to draw from the evidence. The jury concluded that the sum of all uncertainties did not rise to the level of reasonable doubt as to their conclusion that Glover must have known about the gun. Although a different jury may have decided differently, this Court must only interfere with the jury's conclusion if no rational or reasonable jury would convict on these facts. 35 In summary, we hold that there is sufficient evidence linking Glover to the gun use in the robbery and establishing that he knew about it before the crime. 36