David Lee Helmick v. H. C. Cupp, Warden

Habeas corpus. We agree with the district court that petitioner Helmick was not denied due process because three arresting sheriff’s deputies, one of whom testified as a witness for the prosecution, drove the jurors to the scene of the crime, after being designated by the trial judge as bailiffs for that purpose. The facts in this ease relevant to the matter differ materially from those in Turner v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 466 , 85 S.Ct. 546 , 13 L.Ed.2d 424 (1965), a decision upon which Helmick relies.

Here, as the record discloses, the association between the deputies and the jurors was casual and short lived, for the deputies simply were chauffeurs on a trip which lasted no more than forty-five minutes; conversely in Turner the contact was not “a brief encounter but a continuous and intimate association throughout a three day trial — an association which gave these witnesses an opportunity, as Simmons put it, to renew old friendships and make new acquaintances among the members of the jury.” 379 U.S. at 473 , 85 S.Ct. at 550 . And, what is more important, here the deputy’s testimony did not concern the crime itself but was directed to matters about which there was no real issue —…