United States v. Ewing

979 F.2d 1234 (7th Cir. 1992)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

Officers executed a search warrant at D's home. D was arrested, handcuffed and searched; the police seized a set of keys found in D's front pants pocket. A locked strongbox sat on D's dining room table, approximately fifteen feet from where D had been sitting. The police opened the box with one of the keys already seized from D. They found drugs, money, a gun, a checkbook in D and his wife’s names, D’s driver’s license. Police also found two composition notebooks in the landing area near the top of the steps leading down from the dining room to the basement. The two composition notebooks did not have D's name written on them when they were seized by the police during the search of his house. The two notebooks did have D's name written on them when they were introduced at trial as evidence of his drug trafficking enterprise. D's attorney was prepared to testify that six weeks before trial, when she and a paralegal from her office, Abigail Stottlar, examined the evidence Ewing's name did not appear on either composition notebook. The court refused to allow the testimony. D was convicted and appealed.