Court Opinion

ID: 9446094
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:46:02.144332+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:31.338198
License: Public Domain

LEWIS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Although I am not in accord with several of the supporting statements used by the majority in affirming this appellant’s conviction, it will suffice to ground my dissent upon the firm belief that the evidence is totally insufficient to warrant submission to a jury. And while an appellate court should, in view of procedural defects here present, review the sufficiency of the evidence only to prevent manifest injustice, the court should also be slow to give comfort to, and review most carefully the entire basis of, a prosecution apparently based upon that most basic of injustices, an unlawful search and seizure.
The evidence must of course, in view of the jury’s verdict, be now considered in the aspect most favorable to the government. This means that no credence can be given to defendant’s testimony.1 I give it none for the purpose of this review but it is interesting to note that if appellant is a perjurer then the truth would have served him better. Upon *651claim of the possessory right to the liquor in question its suppression as evidence was within his right as the search and seizure were without benefit of arrest or warrant. United States v. Jef-fers, 342 U.S. 48, 72 S.Ct. 93, 96 L.Ed. 59.
The government’s case rests upon two evidentiary circumstances which to affirm this judgment must be held to constitute substantial evidence of guilt. First, the accused was upon the premises where the contraband liquor was subsequently discovered, put something in his car, drove away in normal fashion but subsequently ran a road block put up by federal officers at a point some considerable distance down the road. To me, the natural inference from such conduct is that appellant wished to avoid apprehension because of some misgivings as to his car, its contents, or his companion, and not because he was fleeing from the scene of a crime at the farm house.2 But if other permissible inferences are possible, none probes the substance of the offense itself. “There are so many reasons for such conduct, consistent with innocence, that it scarcely comes up to the standard of evidence tending to establish guilt; but this and similar evidence has been allowed upon the theory that the jury will give it such weight as it deserves, depending upon surrounding circumstances.” Quoted with approval in Hickory v. United States, 160 U.S. 408, 16 S.Ct. 327, 331, 40 L.Ed. 474.
But I do not interpret the main opinion to place more emphasis, nor do I wish to place less emphasis, upon appellant’s alleged flight than to acknowledge it as a circumstance proper for consideration along with the government’s other evidentiary circumstance — the existence of appellant’s fingerprints upon two of the liquor containers found at the farm house.
Upon discovery at the home of Rosie Younger of fourteen and one-half cases of half-gallon jars and one gallon jug of moonshine whiskey together with twenty-nine cases of empties, the investigating officers immediately and summarily destroyed the contraband, saving only those bottles carrying fingerprints. Seventeen fingerprints were found on the jars. The prints were photographed, classified and compared with appellant’s prints. Two of the prints were appellant’s. Fifteen were not. The expert testifying could not state whether the prints were old or new or had been left upon the jars before or after liquor was in the containers. The fingerprinting procedures were completed the day after seizure and thereafter all the jars were lost or destroyed by the officers, including those upon which appellant’s prints were said to appear. No effort was made to identify the fifteen prints admittedly not appellant’s.
To my mind, the appearance of appellant’s prints, interspersed with fifteen prints not his, upon two of the jars containing whiskey, and upon which this prosecution must rest, carries no probative value sufficient to constitute substantial evidence of unlawful possession, removal and concealment of whiskey. The everyday activities of every person leave fingerprints upon a multitude of articles which may subsequently be changed from innocent to prohibited use. The possibilities and even probabilities of injustice are apparent.
Reviewing this record from a moral standpoint I would term this prosecution as shabby, fraught as it is with what I consider unlawful, unfair and suspicious activities upon the part of federal officers. Reviewing this record from a strictly legal standpoint I consider the evidence insufficient to sustain a conviction. Entertaining these views I must be content with the solitude of dissent.

. Defendant was the only witness testifying on his behalf. The witness Bosie Younger, at whose home the liquor was found and who testified unequivocally that the liquor was hers alone, was called and so testified upon direct examination as a witness for the government. The main opinion may inadvertently have given an erroneous impression as to this fact.

. Apparently the government originally shared this view. Although appellant was well known to the officers and lived with his wife and children at a permanent residence in Oklahoma City, he was neither interrogated, apprehended nor arrested until five weeks after this incident.