United States v. Alan Harvey Rice, Lawrence Sanford Toroker, Eddie Javor

The three appellants were convicted in 1966 on several counts involving narcotics violations under 21 U.S.C. §§ 174 & 176a. Their appeal to this court was partially successful, and we remanded for further proceedings on the issue óf the voluntariness of confessions given by Rice and Toroker. Javor v. United States, 403 F.2d 507 (9th Cir. 1968). The trial record, which was before us at the time of the first appeal, supported the conclusion that the District Court had misconstrued its function in making the preliminary determination of voluntariness of the confessions. It appeared to us that the'trial judge had indicated that he was making only a tentative conclusion before sending the case to the jury for a resolution of the conflicting evidence. We remanded for the purpose of allowing the district judge to make an independent finding of whether the confessions were voluntary beyond a reasonable doubt. Jackson v. Denno, 378 U.S. 368 , 84 S.Ct. 1774 , 12 L.Ed.2d 908 (1964). On remand, the district judge made it clear that his trial ruling had been misinterpreted by this court and that he had indeed been convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the confessions were voluntary. We have…