United States v. Terry Harvey

Terry Harvey appeals his conviction and sentence for bank robbery in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2113 (a). He claims the district court erred in: (1) finding police officers were conducting a valid investigatory stop at the time they detained and searched him; (2) finding the officers’ pat-down search within the permissible scope of a Terry frisk; and (3) failing to entertain Harvey’s collateral attack on one of his prior convictions. We affirm.

This is an open and shut case establishing no new proposition of law. We generally do not publish the many cases like this which are appealed. See Circuit Rule 36-2; Burns v. United States, 974 F.2d 1064, 1068 (9th Cir.1992). Nevertheless sometimes the law is clarified by putting an open and shut case on the books precisely to call attention to its open and shut nature, and to dispel the widely-held notion that the law is always a miasma of “it could be argued” and “you never know what a court will do.” In this case, a fleeing robber was caught red-handed, in circumstances where any sensible person would assume that he was in fact the robber. He was.

I. Facts.

On May 26, 1992, a man wearing a turquoise shirt approached teller Derek…