Hoffa v. United States

385 U.S. 293 (1966)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

D was charged with violating a provision of the Taft-Hartley Act. That trial, known in the present record as the Test Fleet trial, ended with a hung jury. During the trial, D occupied a three-room suite in the Andrew Jackson Hotel in Nashville. One of his constant companions throughout the trial was King (D), president of the Nashville local of the Teamsters Union. Edward Partin, a local Teamsters Union official, made repeated visits to Nashville during the period of the trial. He frequented the Hoffa hotel suite, and was continually in the company of Hoffa and his associates, including King, in and around the hotel suite, the hotel lobby, the courthouse, and elsewhere in Nashville. Partin was also making frequent reports to a Sheridan, a federal agent, concerning conversations he said Hoffa and King had had with him and with each other, disclosing endeavors to bribe members of the Test Fleet jury. After the Test Fleet trial was completed, Partin's wife received four monthly installment payments of $300 from government funds, and the state and federal charges against Partin were either dropped or not actively pursued. Partin's reports and his subsequent testimony at D's current trial unquestionably contributed, directly or indirectly, to the convictions of Ds. Ds appealed. Ds contend that only by violating Ds' rights under the Fourth Amendment was Partin able to hear the incriminating statements in the hotel suite and that Partin's testimony was therefore inadmissible under the exclusionary rule of Weeks. Ds argue that Partin's failure to disclose his role as a government informer vitiated the consent that the Ds gave to Partin's repeated entries into the suite, and that, Partin conducted an illegal 'search' for verbal evidence.