United States v. Raymond Levasseur, Carol Ann Manning, Thomas William Manning, Barbara Curzi-Laaman, Richard Charles Williams, Jaan Karl Laaman, 816 F.2d 37, 2d Cir. (1987)
United States v. Raymond Levasseur, Carol Ann Manning, Thomas William Manning, Barbara Curzi-Laaman, Richard Charles Williams, Jaan Karl Laaman, 816 F.2d 37, 2d Cir. (1987)
2d 37
The principal issues raised on appeal pertain to the district court's refusal to
suppress various pieces of evidence seized during searches of appellants'
houses and cars. One motion was denied in advance of a hearing, and two on
the basis of suppression hearing testimony. For reasons explained below, we
affirm all convictions.
BACKGROUND
3A. United Freedom Front: Activities and Investigations
4
Appellants, along with former co-defendant Patricia Gros, were the subjects of
a decade-long, nationwide search prior to their arrests in 1984 and 1985. They
were suspects in a variety of crimes for which several underground
organizations with which appellants were allegedly affiliated took credit.
Among those crimes were eight Boston-area bombings occurring between 1976
and 1979, the murder of a New Jersey State Trooper and the attempted murder
of a Massachusetts State Trooper, several other assaults on law enforcement
officers, and several armed bank robberies.
The indictment in this case charged appellants with conspiring to bomb and
bombing nine buildings (one building twice), and also with an unsuccessful
attempt to bomb an additional site. The ten sites were located in the New York
metropolitan area and were used either by the military or in interstate
commerce. The indictment identified the dates and sites of the completed
bombings as follows:
COUNT
6
----2
DATE
---December 16, 1982
10
11
BUILDING
-------IBM Corp.
600 Mamaroneck Ave.
Harrison, N.Y.
South African Airways
Procurement Office
1975 Linden Blvd.
Elmont, N.Y.
Motorola Corporation
17-22 Whitestone
Expressway
Queens, N.Y.
IBM Corp.
3000 Westchester Ave.
Harrison, N.Y.
General Electric Corp.
Building 1C
Huntington Quadrangle
Melville, N.Y.
Union Carbide Corp.
Old Saw Mill River Road
Mount Pleasant, N.Y.
Theodore Roosevelt Jr.
Army Reserve Center
101 Oak Street
Uniondale, N.Y.
Naval Reserve Center
150-74 6th Avenue
Queens, N.Y.
Sgt. John Muller
Army Reserve Center
555 East 238th Street
Bronx, N.Y.
Navy Recruiting District
Office
1975 Hempstead Turnpike
East Meadow, N.Y.
7 addition, the indictment charged that the attempted bombing took place on
In
December 14, 1983, at 24-30 Skillman Avenue, Queens, N.Y., a building containing
offices of the Honeywell Corporation.
8
Each bomb was built with dynamite, a pocket watch, a 9-volt battery, black
plastic tape, and snap connectors or battery clips. Each explosion was preceded
by a warning call and followed by one in a series of consecutively numbered
communiques. In the communiques, the United Freedom Front (UFF) claimed
responsibility and identified its purported political justifications for the
bombings.
10
By the fall of 1984, appellants had moved into several residences in and around
Cleveland, Ohio. Their discovery there led numerous FBI agents and law
enforcement officials to converge on the area.
11
12
The next morning, November 4th, Levasseur and Gros were arrested when they
emerged from their Deerfield farmhouse. That same day, agents surrounded the
West 22nd Street house in Cleveland and, using loudspeakers, asked those
inside to surrender. Appellants Laaman, Curzi-Laaman, and Williams emerged
and were arrested without incident. Several agents from an FBI SWAT team
promptly entered the house; one agent later testified that they entered in search
of other suspects who may have been lurking inside. The SWAT team members
observed, but did not then seize, a total of four weapons on the first and second
floors of the house. They turned over the house to a second team of agents who
were to occupy the premises until a search warrant arrived. One member of this
team discovered in an open basement closet a cannister apparently containing
explosive powder and summoned a Cleveland Police Department Bomb Squad
detective to examine the cannister. Unlike the weapons previously seen, the
cannister was therefore seized before the search warrant arrived the next day.
13
Manning of the agents' arrival. After his arrest, he told the agent that the
Mannings would be long gone, and then provided the agent with their telephone
number. From that number, the FBI was able to identify 1885 Dodgeville
Road, Jefferson, Ohio, as the Mannings' address. Law enforcement officers
converged on that house at approximately 4:00 a.m. the next day (November 5,
1984), in hopes of effecting the Mannings' arrest pursuant to outstanding arrest
warrants.
14
When the agents received no response to their demands that anyone inside the
Dodgeville Road house surrender, they entered the fully furnished premises and
searched it for hidden occupants. None were found, but agents testified that
they saw in plain view four shoulder weapons hanging on a wall, a scanning
device tuned to a frequency used by the FBI, and three footlockers, only one of
which was locked. Upon a suggestion that the padlocked footlocker might be
booby-trapped, a bomb technician opened it and observed that it contained
several additional guns with ammunition. None of the items in the Dodgeville
Road house was moved, and the premises were secured while the information
obtained during the sweep was relayed to officials working on securing a search
warrant. The Mannings never returned.
15
Another agent who had worked on the UFF investigation since late 1982
testified at the suppression hearing that the Mannings had rented the house
under the names Steven and Leah Carr. He also discovered that their rent was
paid through the end of November 1984.
16
On November 5, 1984, a search warrant was issued for the houses in Deerfield,
Cleveland, and Jefferson. The government submitted with its application for the
warrant an affidavit executed by FBI Agent Leonard C. Cross ("the Cross
Affidavit"), which summarized information about appellants' activities,
gathered by various investigators during the previous ten years. A substantial
portion of that information had been obtained through FBI informant Joseph
Aceto, who had been involved in numerous activities with appellants during the
mid-1970's, in a Massachusetts-based group that came to call itself the Sam
Melville-Jonathan Jackson Unit ("the SMJJU"). The Cross Affidavit described
Aceto as a protected government witness, an attempted murderer, and a
participant in several bombings. Agent Cross did not inform the Magistrate who
issued the warrant that Aceto, after receiving witness protection, was convicted
and incarcerated for criminal activity in Arkansas, killed another inmate
thereafter, received treatment for psychiatric problems, and had a history of
drug and alcohol abuse. The Cross Affidavit also relayed much information not
obtained from Aceto, including information gathered during the arrests and
protective sweeps that had just taken place in the preceeding two days.
17
After obtaining the search warrant, investigators searched the three Ohio
houses and cars parked on the premises. Among the items recovered and
introduced at trial were weapons, ammunition, bomb-preparation instructions
and materials, copies of UFF communiques, and notebooks containing coded
information about the planning, execution, and review of the bombings charged
in the indictment.
18
The Mannings avoided arrest for nearly six months; they finally were found in
Norfolk, Virginia in late April 1985. At that time, the government obtained a
search warrant for 134 Conway Street, a residence the Mannings had rented on
November 16, 1984, using the names Allison S. and Charles Boone. The
application for the search warrant, in essence, repeated much of the information
contained in the Cross Affidavit and referred to evidence discovered through
the searches of the three Ohio residences. Among the items seized at the
Mannings' Norfolk house were rent receipts dating back to November 19, 1984,
money orders, store receipts, and a November 5, 1984 article about the Ohio
arrests. The article had been printed in the Winchester Star, a newspaper
apparently distributed only in Virginia.B. Pretrial Motions
19
Appellants moved to suppress all physical evidence seized at the Ohio and
Virginia residences pursuant to the November 1984 and April 1985 search
warrants. In a motion pursuant to Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 98 S.Ct.
2674, 57 L.Ed.2d 667 (1978), appellants contested the adequacy of the Cross
Affidavit, asserting that it contained knowingly and intentionally false
misrepresentations and deliberately misleading omissions about Aceto, that it
failed to establish any nexus between the items being sought and the premises
to be searched, and that the information presented in the affidavit was stale. In a
decision reported at 619 F.Supp. 775 (E.D.N.Y.1985), Judge Glasser denied the
Franks motion without a hearing. Judge Glasser rejected appellants' staleness
and nexus arguments outright. He further found that most of the alleged
inaccuracies were insignificant, and that there was sufficient information
untainted by the alleged deficiencies to establish probable cause justifying
issuance of the warrant.
20
published at 620 F.Supp. 624 (E.D.N.Y.1985), Judge Glasser first held that the
agents and police officers had lawfully entered the Mannings' Jefferson house
in view of the outstanding arrest warrants, and then found the warrantless
search of the locked footlocker reasonable because the Mannings had
abandoned the Jefferson house and thereby ended their reasonable expectations
of privacy in the property. Id. at 628-31. As an alternative holding, Judge
Glasser found the weapons discovered in the locked footlocker admissible
under the inevitable discovery exception to the exclusionary rule. Id. at 630-31
(citing Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 431, 104 S.Ct. 2501, 81 L.Ed.2d 377 (1984)).
In support of this alternative holding, the court found that at the time agents
searched the locked footlocker, the government already possessed, and was
actively pursuing, lawful means for gaining access to that container. Id.
(discussing United States v. Satterfield, 743 F.2d 827, 846 (11th Cir.1984);
United States v. Alvarez-Porras, 643 F.2d 54, 63 (2d Cir.1981); United States
v. Griffin, 502 F.2d 959, 961 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 1050, 95 S.Ct.
626, 42 L.Ed.2d 645 (1974)).
21
Finally, in a ruling not contested on appeal, the district court held that items
seized from the Laaman/Curzi-Laaman residence in Cleveland were admissible
under the plain view doctrine. See 618 F.Supp. 1390 (E.D.N.Y.1985). Having
credited the agents' testimony that the weapons and the cannister were in plain
view, Judge Glasser also denied that portion of the Franks motion which
challenged this representation in the Cross Affidavit. See id. at 1393.
After denying the suppression motions, the district court conducted a fivemonth jury trial during which the government introduced, among other pieces
of evidence, the weapons, bomb-building materials, instruction manuals, maps
identifying the bombing sites, and copies of UFF communiques. In addition, the
government introduced expert testimony analyzing handwriting, fingerprints,
shoeprints, tool marks, explosives, and the coding system allegedly used in the
seized documents.
23
At the close of the government's case, appellants moved to dismiss the charges
relating to bombings outside the Eastern District of New York. The district
court refused to do so, concluding that because the venue defect was readily
apparent on the face of the indictment, appellants had waived their objection by
failing to raise it pre-trial. The district court also denied all Fed.R.Crim.P. 29
motions for judgments of acquittal.
24
The defense presented several witnesses who testified that harassment by law
On the thirteenth day of deliberations, the jury began sending notes to Judge
Glasser, inquiring about whether and how to report partial verdicts. The
exchange of notes and supplemental instructions culminated on the fourteenth
day with the jury announcing its wish "to discontinue deliberations and to hand
out our verdicts for the [previously specified] counts that we have reached the
unanimous decision on." Trial Transcript 11,818. The jury then reported guilty
verdicts as to all six appellants, on a total of twenty-seven counts. Overruling a
defense objection that the jurors should be allowed to discontinue, Judge
Glasser read a modified Allen charge and, two hours later, asked each juror
whether he or she felt that additional deliberations would enable them to reach
decisions on the remaining forty-five counts. When six said yes and six said no,
he directed them to continue deliberating. Three days later, Judge Glasser
accepted guilty verdicts for two appellants, on a total of five counts, plus a notguilty verdict for one appellant on one count, and declared a mistrial as to the
other thirty-nine counts.
DISCUSSION
A. The Franks Motion
26
Under Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154, 98 S.Ct. 2674, 57 L.Ed.2d 667
(1978), a district court may not admit evidence seized pursuant to a warrant if
the warrant was based on materially false and misleading information. As the
district court correctly observed, materially misleading omissions as well as
misrepresentations may be challenged by the defense. See e.g., United States v.
Ferguson, 758 F.2d 843, 848 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 106 S.Ct. 124,
88 L.Ed.2d 102 (1985).
27
The Franks Court outlined the procedures and standards to be used in trying to
balance the defense's right to challenge the sufficiency of the affidavit against
the potential for misuse of the privilege as a way to expand the proper scope of
discovery. 438 U.S. at 171, 98 S.Ct. at 2684. Specifically, the court held that a
defendant would be entitled to a hearing on a challenge to the affidavit only
upon a "substantial preliminary showing" that (1) the affidavit contained false
We agree with the district court's conclusion that the majority of alleged
deficiencies in the Cross Affidavit were too insignificant to suggest that agent
Cross had deliberately falsified information or shown a reckless disregard for
the truth. See 619 F.Supp. at 779-82. We also agree with the district court that
the failure to outline informant Aceto's full history of pre- and post-cooperation
criminal activity, drug and alcohol abuse, and psychiatric problems did not
require that there be an evidentiary hearing on the motion. See id. at 784-85.
This is because, as the district court noted, more than thirty paragraphs in the
Cross Affidavit recited detailed information, not obtained from Aceto, about
the appellants' criminal activities, about previous discoveries of weapons,
ammunition, dynamite and other materials at houses abandoned by the
appellants, and about the then-recent sightings of explosives, weapons, and
other evidence in the particular places to be searched. Id. at 785-91 (quoting
Cross Affidavit paragraphs 24-54). Those paragraphs provided more than
enough "independent and lawful information ... to support [a finding of]
probable cause." Ferguson, 758 F.2d at 849.
29
Thus, despite our concern that the Cross Affidavit may have seriously
understated the factors that would call into question Aceto's reliability, we
conclude that the district court properly denied the Franks motion without a
hearing.
Since one forfeits any reasonable expectation of privacy upon abandoning one's
property, a warrantless search or seizure of abandoned property does not violate
the fourth amendment. E.g., Abel v. United States, 362 U.S. 217, 240-41, 80
S.Ct. 683, 697-98, 4 L.Ed.2d 668 (1960); United States v. Wilson, 472 F.2d
901, 902 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 414 U.S. 868, 94 S.Ct. 176, 38 L.Ed.2d 116
(1973). Abandonment is a question of fact, to be decided in objective terms on
the basis of all the relevant facts and circumstances, see, e.g., United States v.
Sledge, 650 F.2d 1075, 1077 (9th Cir.1981); United States v. Wyler, 502
F.Supp. 959, 967 (S.D.N.Y.1980), and not on the basis of leasehold interests or
other property rights. Jones v. United States, 362 U.S. 257, 265-67, 80 S.Ct.
725, 733-34, 4 L.Ed.2d 697 (1960); United States v. Cella, 568 F.2d 1266,
1283 (9th Cir.1978); United States v. Edwards, 441 F.2d 749, 753 (5th
Cir.1971).
31
The facts and circumstances pertinent to the court's abandonment inquiry are
not limited to those which were known to the officers at the time of the search
or seizure. Rather, subsequently discovered events may support an inference
that appellants had already chosen, and manifested their decision, not to return
to the property. E.g., United States v. Callabrass, 607 F.2d 559, 566 (2d
Cir.1979) (Oakes, J., dissenting); Parman v. United States, 399 F.2d 559, 565
(D.C.Cir.1968) (Burger, J.).
32
In this case, the district court properly identified and weighed the relevant facts
and circumstances in finding abandonment. Among the facts supporting this
conclusion are the UFF members' history of living underground and fleeing
suddenly as the FBI drew near, plus the Mannings' awareness that the FBI had
just surrounded the Cleveland house and arrested their colleagues there. As the
district court properly noted, the Mannings' failure to take their weapons,
clothing, and personal belongings with them to Virginia does not necessarily
indicate that they had intentions of returning to the Jefferson house. Instead,
coupled with all the other signs of abandonment, it suggests that they learned of
the Cleveland arrests while outside their home, and logically decided that it
would be too risky to return to the Jefferson house just to pack. See 620 F.Supp.
at 630 & n. 1.
33
34
C. Other Issues
35
We have considered the other issues raised on appeal, and find them to be
without merit. We briefly set forth our conclusions on several of the claims
below.
36
First, we agree with the lower court that the indictment gave clear notice of
venue defects. Therefore, appellants waived this objection by failing to raise it
before trial. United States v. Price, 447 F.2d 23, 27 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 404
U.S. 912, 92 S.Ct. 232, 30 L.Ed.2d 186 (1971).
37
Second, viewing the record evidence in the light most favorable to the
government, e.g., Burks v. United States, 437 U.S. 1, 17, 98 S.Ct. 2141, 2150,
57 L.Ed.2d 1 (1978); United States v. LeRoy, 687 F.2d 610, 616 (2d Cir.1982),
cert. denied, 459 U.S. 1174, 103 S.Ct. 823, 74 L.Ed.2d 1019 (1983), we must
conclude that the evidence was more than sufficient to lead a rational trier of
fact to find appellants Carol Manning and Barbara Curzi-Laaman guilty on
Counts 8 and 9. Among the evidence supporting the charge that these two
appellants aided and abetted those who actually placed the bombs were
notebook entries showing that they had helped select the targets, decide on the
strength of the explosives, and prepare communiques. The notebooks also
quoted Carol Manning as being "thrill[ed] to have women acknowledged." See
Trial Transcript 8458-66.
38
Next, we conclude that Judge Glasser's acceptance of the partial verdicts was
entirely consistent with Fed.R.Crim.P. 31(b) and with case law in this circuit.
This court has long allowed partial jury verdicts which resolve less than all
counts as well as those which resolve all counts against less than all defendants.
See United States v. DiLapi, 651 F.2d 140, 146-47 (2d Cir.1981), cert. denied,
455 U.S. 938, 102 S.Ct. 1427, 71 L.Ed.2d 648 (1982). Appellants' claim that
the trial court's conduct in obtaining a partial verdict was "offensively coercive"
is totally without merit. The voluminous trial record is a testimonial to the
patience, scholarship, and judicial temperament of an outstanding jurist.
39
Judge Glasser did not abuse his discretion in refusing to declare a mistrial
during deliberations when one juror announced that he was scheduled to attend
a Naval Reserve meeting at one of the bombing sites, particularly in view of
appellants' failure to challenge this juror despite his acknowledgement during
voir dire that he was a member of the Naval Reserve.
40
Finally, we affirm the district court's decision to admit the coded notebooks
40
CONCLUSION
41
Judge Mansfield participated in oral argument but died before this opinion was
prepared. The remaining judges on the panel have decided this appeal in
accordance with Second Circuit Rule Sec. 0.14