United States v. Richard Earl Williams

Williams was found guilty by a jury under a one-count indictment charging him with bank robbery, 18 U.S.C. § 2113 (a). We affirm. Williams argues that: (1) The evidence is insufficient to sustain the conviction; (2) the court erred in denying his pretrial request for an in-court lineup; (3) the court erred in admitting the testimony of two eyewitnesses, because that testimony was the product of illegal pretrial identification procedure; and (4) the court erred in not granting his pretrial motion to suppress that same testimony on the ground that it was the tainted fruit of an illegal search.

1. Sufficiency of the evidence.

On December 2, 1968, a man with shoulder-length hair and a full beard, wearing a bright shirt and a headband, entered the Citizens Commercial Bank in Pasadena, California. He approached a table facing the window of teller Hedy Renfro and remained there for three or four minutes while he wrote something. He then walked past teller Renfro’s window toward the window of teller Judy Kelley. Teller Renfro had no line before her window, and asked him if she could help him. He looked at her, mumbled something that she could not clearly understand, and joined the line…