Panel upholds woman's conviction as accessory to bank robbery

The Associated Press

A federal appeals panel ruled Thursday that a judge was correct to allow prosecutors to ask a woman charged an accessory to a Marion bank robbery about three other robberies an accomplice confessed to before he killed himself in jail.

Shari Ann Tucker, 46, of Powhatan Point, Ohio, was convicted Feb. 2, 2007, in federal court of being an accessory after the fact in a Nov. 30, 2004, robbery of the First Community Bank of Eastern Arkansas in Marion. She was sentenced to 33 months in prison, 30 of which were served in pretrial detention. Prosecutors said Tucker drove the getaway vehicle and that Perry Robson robbed the bank, handing a note to a teller saying he had a gun. He fled with $13,000.

A witness had described the Jeep that Robson and Tucker were in, and police pulled them over half an hour later on Interstate 55 in Tyronza.

Tucker told police she was “kind of knowing what was going to happen” when Robson left the vehicle and, in a written statement, acknowledged that after Robson returned, “I knew Perry had robbed the bank.”

According to the opinion from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis, Robson confessed to the robbery in an interview with an FBI agent. Robson also said he committed three prior robberies in Florida, Oklahoma and West Virginia. He said Tucker drove for him in the first robbery, and that after the other two he had told her about them. Tucker used a blanket to hang himself from a light fixture in his jail cell a short time after the interview.

Robson’s statement was not introduced at trial. But U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Eisele allowed prosecutors to ask Tucker during cross examination about the robberies in other states. Tucker, who testified in her defense, answered that she didn’t remember any of the robberies. She also testified that she didn’t know Robson had robbed the Marion bank until they were being pulled over; she told the jury he just got in the vehicle, slapped her and told her to drive away.

A witness said Robson was trailing money as he ran from the bank and police said that, in the vehicle, the money was stuffed in Robson’s hat in plain view. Police found the robbery note torn up in Tucker’s purse.

“She said she had ’no idea’ why the torn-up robbery note was in her purse,” the opinion said.

Tucker appealed on grounds that the evidence was not sufficient and that the information from Robson should not have been allowed because she could not cross examine him.

The court turned away Tucker’s arguments.

“Because the critical issue at trial was whether Tucker knew Robson had robbed the bank when she assisted his getaway, evidence that Tucker knew Robson had committed the other bank robberies earlier that year was clearly relevant and therefore admissible,” Chief Judge James B. Loken wrote for the three-judge panel.

The opinion said that because Robson’s statement was not admitted, the cross-examination issue could not be raised.

The panel also said the evidence was sufficient and that prosecutors had a good basis to question Tucker about the other robberies.

Tucker also appealed her sentence but conceded that became moot when she finished her term.

Authorities said Tucker separately faced a charge related to the 2003 robbery of a bank in Sardis, Ohio.