Gordon et al. v. United States (344 U.S. 414)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided February 2, 1953 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 344 U.S. 414 · 73 S. Ct. 369
- Docket
- No. 182
- Argued
- December 17, 1952
- Decided
- February 2, 1953
- Term
- October Term 1952
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Jackson (R.H.)
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
How the Justices voted
- Majority
- Chief Justice Vinson, Justice Minton, Justice Clark, Justice Burton, Justice R. H. Jackson (wrote), Justice Douglas, Justice Frankfurter, Justice Reed, Justice Black
Opinion excerpt
Mr. Justice Jackson delivered the opinion of the Court. Petitioners Gordon and MacLeod were convicted on an indictment of four counts, two charging unlawful possession of goods stolen while in interstate commerce and two that defendants caused this property to be further transported in interstate commerce. The Court of Appeals affirmed, and we granted certiorari limited to questions concerning production and admission of documentary evidence tending to impeach the testimony of a prosecution witness. The Government proved that film being shipped from Rochester, New York, to Chicago, Illinois, was stolen from a truck in Chicago and that part of it later had been recovered in Detroit. To implicate the two petitioners, it relied principally on one Marshall, who, in Detroit, had pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of the film. Marshall testified that he and a codefendant, Swartz, who died before trial, on several occasions had driven from Detroit to Chicago and back. On each visit they had stopped at petitioner Gordon’s Chicago jewelry store. On one trip, according to Marshall, Gordon accompanied them to a garage in that city and there Gordon and a man resembling MacLeod helped to load into Marshall’s car film that was stacked in the garage. A week later, Marshall said, he and Swartz again called on Gordon, when the latter sent them to see “Ken” at an address which he wrote on a…
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