Opinion ID: 320663
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: mitchell miller

Text: 18 In addition to his Business Records Act claim, defendant Miller makes five assignments of error on this appeal: (1) the trial court erred by admitting microfilm copies of Miller's bank checks obtained by means of an illegal grand jury subpoena duces tecum; (2) the trial court erred by overruling, on the ground of lack of standing, Miller's motion to suppress evidence from a Pepsico rental truck; (3) the trial court abused its discretion by denying Miller's motion for continuance; (4) the trial court abused its discretion by denying Miller's motion for severance; (5) the trial court erred in denying Miller's motion for directed verdict of acquittal as to Counts 2, 3 and 5. 19 A. The 'Grand Jury' Subpoena. Miller's objection to the introduction of microfilm copies of his bank checks rests on two separate but related contentions. First, relying primarily on the three-judge district court decision in Stark v. Connally, N.D.Cal.1972, 347 F.Supp. 1242, Miller asserts that provisions of the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 requiring banks to microfilm all checks passing through them constitute a violation of depositors' Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Second, Miller claims that the subpoenas used to obtain the microfilm copies here were illegal because they were issued by the United States Attorney rather than by the court, because no return was made upon the subpoenas to the court, and because the subpoenas were issued for a date when the grand jury was not in session. 20 Miller's argument that the Bank Secrecy Act is unconstitutional is now foreclosed by the Supreme Court's recent decision in California Bankers Ass'n v. Shultz, 1974, 416 U.S. 21, 94 S.Ct. 1494, 39 L.Ed.2d 812, reversing in part Stark v. Connally, supra. However, in view of the long recognized inclusion of private papers and records within the scope of Fourth Amendment protections, reinforced by the Court's reasoning in California Bankers, we hold that obtaining copies of Miller's bank checks by means of a faulty subpoena duces tecum constituted an unlawful invasion of Miller's privacy, and that any evidence so obtained should have been suppressed. 21 On January 23, 1973, agents of the government's Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms (ATF) Unit presented to Barry Jones, President of Citizens and Southern National Bank, Warner Robins, Georgia, and to Harold Peavey, President of the Bank of Byron, Byron, Georgia, purported grand jury subpoenas duces tecum requiring them to appear in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Georgia at 9:00 a.m., on January 24, 1973. The subpoenas commanded the recipients to produce 22 all records of accounts, i.e., savings, checking, loan or otherwise, in the name of Mr. Mitch Miller, 3859 Mathis Street, Macon, Ga. and/or Mitch Miller, Associates, 100 Executive Terrace, Warner Robins, Ga., from October 1, 1972, through the present date. 23 Defendant Miller was not advised that these subpoenas had been served. After the banks supplied the requested documents to the ATF agents, Jones and Peavey were advised that they would not need to appear at the January 24 grand jury session. In fact, the grand jury did not meet on January 24; their next meeting was on February 12, nearly three weeks later. 24 At the suppression hearing ATF Agent Powell testified that he viewed microfilm copies of all checks on Miller's account at the Bank of Byron and took copies of one deposit slip and one or two checks. At the Citizens and Southern Bank Agent Powell received copies of all of Miller's checks for the period covered by the subpoena except for two that would not print. The prosecution introduced several of these copies into evidence at trial, using them to help establish at least three of the overt acts charged against Miller in furtherance of the conspiracy. 25 Both Jones and Peavey entered stipulated testimony that their banks kept microfilm copies of customers' accounts and of personal checks paid through those accounts 'in compliance with Treasury and Banking Regulations issued under the Bank Secrecy Act.' 3 The Citizens and Southern Bank had not maintained complete microfilm check records prior to the effective date of the regulations (Record, Vol. II, pp. 35-36); the trial transcript does not reflect whether the Bank of Byron had previously kept such records. 26 As we have noted, the Supreme Court's decision in California Bankers Ass'n v. Shultz, supra, disposes of Miller's challenge to the constitutionality of the recordkeeping requirements of the Bank Secrecy Act. That decision, however, did not place the judicial stamp of approval upon every prosecutorial tactic for obtaining records compiled under the requirements of the Act. 27 The Supreme Court determined almost 90 years ago that 'a compulsory production of a man's private papers to establish a criminal charge against him . . . is within the scope of the Fourth Amendment . . ..' Boyd v. United States, 1886, 116 U.S. 616, 622, 6 S.Ct. 524, 528, 29 L.Ed. 746. The venerable Boyd doctrine still retains its vitality; 4 the government may not cavalierly circumvent Boyd's precious protection by first requiring a third party bank to copy all of its depositors' personal checks and then, with an improper invocation of legal process, calling upon the bank to allow inspection and reproduction of those copies. In upholding the Bank Secrecy Act the divided California Bankers Court determined that the government could take the first of those steps without exceeding constitutional limits. The Court, however, did not choose to abandon 90 years of precedent by proclaiming open season on personal bank records. Indeed, in rejecting the Fourth Amendment claims of bank depositor plaintiffs, the California Bankers majority, in an opinion by Justice Rehnquist, relied heavily upon the proposition that depositors have adequate legal protection from improper government access to their records: 28 We see nothing in the Act which violates the Fourth Amendment rights of any of these plaintiffs. Neither the provisions of Title I (Recordkeeping Requirements) nor the implementing regulations require that any information contained in the records be disclosed to the Government; both the legislative history and the regulations make specific reference to the fact that access to the records is to be controlled by existing legal process. 29 416 U.S. at 52, 94 S.Ct. at 1513, 39 L.Ed.2d at 835. 5 Surely a purported grand jury subpoena, issued not by the court or by the grand jury, but by the United States Attorney's office, for a date when no grand jury was in session, and which in effect compelled broad disclosure of Miller's financial records to the government, does not constitute sufficient 'legal process' within the meaning of the majority opinion. 6 30 It is no answer to argue, as does the government on this appeal, that bank officials cooperated fully and without objection; for he whose rights are threatened by the improper disclosure here was a bank depositor, not a bank official, and depositors as well as banks must be accorded the protection of 'legal process.' See Donaldson v. United States, 1971, 400 U.S. 517, 537, 91 S.Ct. 534, 27 L.Ed.2d 580 (Douglas, J., concurring); United states v. Kordel, 1970, 397 U.S. 1, 7, 90 S.Ct. 763, 25 L.Ed.2d 1. The trial court should not have admitted into evidence copies of Miller's bank checks or any evidence resulting from investigative leads provided by information from those checks. Without attempting to chart any future course to be followed to validly obtain such evidence, we now hold that defendant Miller is entitled to a new trial free from the taint of evidence improperly acquired. 31 B. Standing to Challenge the Search of the Pepsico Van. Defendant Miller raises one other very troublesome issue on this appeal. He argues that the trial court improperly overruled, on the basis of lack of standing, his motion to suppress distillery apparatus and raw material seized from a Pepsico rental truck. On the basis of information supplied by an informant that a 'blue van type truck . . . would be picking up some kind of illegal stuff to manufacture liquor,' Deputy Sheriff Burnham stopped a Pepsico truck, which was occupied by Joseph Brooks and Terry Lee Smith. 7 When Brooks and Smith were unable to produce a key to the back of the van, Deputy Burnham took them and the truck to the county jail, obtained a search warrant, and searched the truck; the search revealed cylinders of bottled gas, a shotgun condenser, two 100 pound bags of wheat shorts, a cap, and 150 five gallon plastic jugs. Defendants Miller, Weeks, and McDuffie all filed motions to suppress the evidence obtained from the Pepsico truck. 8 On April 19, 1973, the district court granted those motions, declaring that: 32 the affidavit in question and the resulting search warrant does not meet the minimum requirements of the laws of the State of Georgia, Georgia Law 1966, pp. 567-568, as informally codified in Ga.Code Ann. 27-303, and the constitutional requirements as interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States in the cases of Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U.S. 108, 12 L.Ed.2d 723, 84 S.Ct. 1509; Spinelli v. United States, 393 U.S. 410, 21 L.Ed.2d 637, 89 S.Ct. 584, and United States v. Harris, 403 U.S. 573, 29 L.Ed.2d 723, 91 S.Ct. 2075, in that said affidavit, among other things, does not contain information in any was sufficient to demonstrate that the Justice of the Peace who issued the search warrant in question was afforded information by which the Justice of the Peace had the opportunity to independently judge the sufficiency of the information furnished by the informer to the Deputy Sheriff. (Record, Vol. I., pp. 78-79). 33 On the morning the first trial began, the government noved the court to reconsider its order granting defendants' motions to suppress, claiming that defendants Miller, McDuffie, and Weeks lacked 'the requisite standing to challenge the illegal search' because they 'were neither in the vehicle nor owners of, nor claimants of an interest in the vehicle or the object seized therefrom,' (Record, Vol. I, pp. 91, 93-94). The court granted the government's motion and permitted the evidence to be introduced at trial. 34 In his motion to suppress, defendant Miller stated that he 'believes that the Government will attempt to prove either the purchase of or ownership by him of the above described vehicle.' (Record, Vol. I, p. 34). The conspiracy count of the original indictment, in Overt Act #9, charged that Miller had purchased the Pepsico van in question on November 22, 1972, from Dixie Truck and Parts Company and that Miller had indicated that the purchase was for Trans Aero Corporation. In order to defeat Miller's standing to challenge the search of the van, the government agreed to have Overt Act #9 deleted from the indictment. At the hearing on the government's motion to reconsider the suppression order, the prosecution took the position that the corporation, not Miller, owned the truck. By arrangement of its evidence at the second trial, however, the government sought to show that Miller exercised control over the use of the van and that the purchase in the name of the corporation was merely a straw purchase by Miller. Other than his allegation that 'the Government will attempt to prove . . . ownership,' Miller made no claim, either before or during the trial, that he owned the van. 35 The facts of this case pose the question left unanswered by Brown v. United States, 1973, 411 U.S. 223, 93 S.Ct. 1565, 36 L.Ed.2d 208, the Supreme Court's most recent ruling on the requirements for standing to challenge a search, and by Brown's gloss on the Court's earlier decision in Jones v. United States, 1960, 362 U.S. 257, 80 S.Ct. 725, 4 L.Ed.2d 697. In Brown the Court held that, at least when prosecutorial self-contradiction is not a factor, 36 there is no standing to contest a search and seizure where . . . the defendants: (a) were not on the premises at the time of the contested search and seizure; (b) alleged no proprietary or possessory interest in the premises; and (c) were not charged with an offense that includes, as an essential element of the offense charged, possession of the seized evidence at the time of the contested search and seizure. 37 411 U.S. at 229, 93 S.Ct. at 1569. Miller alleged, not that he had a proprietary or possessory interest in the premises, but that the government would attempt to prove such an interest; and Miller cannot claim standing on the basis of either standard (a) or standard (c). Therefore, absent the element of prosecutorial self-contradiction in the present case, Miller would not be able to challenge the search and seizure of the van. 38 The Court's earlier Jones decision, however, clearly deemed that missing element to be a critical factor: 39 To hold that petitioner's failure to acknowledge interest in the narcotics or the premises prevented his attack upon the search, would be to permit the Government to have the advantage of contradictory positions as a basis for conviction . . .. The prosecution here thus subjected the defendant to the penalties meted out to one in lawless possession while refusing him the remedies designed for one in that situation. It is not consonant with the amenities, to put it mildly, of the administration of criminal justice to sanction such squarely contradictory assertions of power by the Government. 362 U.S. at 263-264, 80 S.Ct. at 732. 9 40 The self-contradictory prosecutorial conduct in the present case is within the ambit of the reasoning, if not the strict holding, in Jones. The Court in Brown, however, viewing Jones through the prism of the intervening case of Simmons v. United States, 10 left open the question of whether standing is conferred as a matter of course, even absent any of the three stated indicia, when prosecutorial self-contradiction is demonstrated: 41 We do not decide that this vice of prosecutorial self-contradiction warrants the continued survival of 'Jones' 'automatic' standing now that our decision in Simmons has removed the danger of coerced self-incrimination. We simply see no reason to afford such 'automatic' standing where, as here, (there was no) risk to a defendant of either self-incrimination or prosecutorial self-contradiction. 42 Brown v. United States, supra, 411 U.S. at 229, 93 S.Ct. at 1569. 43 Given the posture of the case sub judice, we also may defer a decision as to whether the government's duplicitous tactics were sufficient to confer standing upon defendant Miller. Miller is entitled to a new trial because of the trial court's error in admitting copies of his bank checks into evidence. See Part II A, supra. At his new trial Miller may choose to assert his proprietary interest at the suppression hearing. He would thereby establish, under standard (b) of the Brown test, his standing to challenge the search of the van, and would obviate any need for this Court to decide what follows Jones and Brown in this troublesome area of criminal procedure. 44 C. Continuance, Severance, and Insufficient Evidence. After careful consideration of the record on appeal and the arguments of the parties, we find no merit in Miller's remaining assignments of error. The trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying Miller's motions for continuance 11 and for severance. See, e.g., Ungar v. Sarafite, 1964, 376 U.S. 575, 84 S.Ct. 841, 11 L.Ed.2d 921 (continuance); McKinney v. Wainwright, 5 Cir. 1974, 488 F.2d 28, cert. denied, 416 U.S. 973, 94 S.Ct. 1998, 40 L.Ed.2d 562 (continuance; Leach v. United States, 5 Cir. 1968, 402 F.2d 268, cert. denied, 1969, 393 U.S. 1082, 89 S.Ct. 864, 21 L.Ed.2d 775 (severance). Finally, we conclude that there was sufficient evidence for the district judge to submit to the jury the questions of defendant Miller's guilt or innocence of possessing an unregistered distillery (Count 2), carrying on the business of a distiller without giving bond (Count 3), and possessing non-tax-paid whiskey (Count 5).