Record
Court opinion
1966-12-12
CourtListener (Free Law Project), text of the opinion
Hoffa v. United States, 385 U.S. 293 (1966)
The Supreme Court upheld the 1964 jury-tampering convictions of James Hoffa and three others, holding that the Government's use of Edward Partin, who reported Hoffa's statements during the 1962 Nashville trial, did not violate the Fourth, Fifth or Sixth Amendments.
- Date
- 1966-12-12
- Kind
- court-opinion
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Docket
- No. 32, October Term 1966 (with Nos. 33, 34 and 35); 385 U.S. 293
- Rights
- Opinion of a United States court. Works of the federal judiciary are in the public domain in the United States (17 U.S.C. § 105). The text was read on CourtListener (Free Law Project).
Supreme Court of the United States, argued 13 October 1966 and decided 12 December 1966, with the cases of Parks, Campbell and King. Justice Stewart wrote for the Court; Chief Justice Warren dissented.
The opinion begins: “Over a period of several weeks in the late autumn of 1962 there took place in a federal court in Nashville, Tennessee, a trial by jury in which James Hoffa was charged with violating a provision of the Taft-Hartley Act.” That trial is the Test Fleet case. Hoffa and the others were convicted “in 1964 for endeavoring to bribe members of that jury.”
The question was the Government’s use of Edward Partin, a Teamsters official from Baton Rouge, who frequented Hoffa’s suite at the Andrew Jackson Hotel during the Nashville trial and made reports to “a federal agent named Sheridan” about conversations he said Hoffa and others had had. The Court held that this did not violate the Fourth, Fifth or Sixth Amendments, and affirmed.