Allen's Legal Significance

Allen's Background Story

Justice Blackmun's called Allen v. McCurry a case with “ugly facts.”  As apparent from the opinions, Willie McCurry (pictured at right) was a violent drug dealer who had little compunction about shooting two police officers and then suing them.  What is not apparent from the opinions is the surprisingly unsavory subsequent history of one of those officers, Marvin Allen.

To put it mildly, Willie McCurry  was an unsympathetic character.  At the time of the incidents that led him to the Supreme Court, McCurry had more than forty arrests going back twenty-three years and five convictions, including one conviction for manslaughter.  On April 9, 1977, acting on a tip that McCurry was selling heroin from his house, two undercover police officers (accompanied by a concealed team of tactical officers) went to McCurry’s house to make a buy.  Instead of selling them heroin, McCurry shot and severely wounded the two officers.  After an extended gun battle with the tactical officers, McCurry surrendered.  He was convicted of possession of heroin and two counts of assault with intent to kill, and was sentenced to two consecutive thirty year terms for the assaults and a concurrent ten year term for possession.  Effectively, this was a life sentence, and he was not released until a few weeks before his death on September 16, 2001.

 But McCurry did not sit idle in prison.  Instead, he sued the two police officer he had shot (along with several John Doe defendants) for $1,000,000 claiming that they had conspired to violate his fourth amendment rights and had beaten him after his arrest.  The latter claim was particularly surprising since the two officers, Marvin Allen and Steven Jacobsmeyer, were lying on the ground critically wounded at the time of the search and the alleged beating.  As discussed in the previous column, the Supreme Court ordered dismissal of most of McCurry’s claims.  However, the Court did remand for a retrial on the beating claim and a portion of the unlawful search claims.  Not surprisingly, the trial court granted Officers Jacobsmeyer and Allen directed verdicts on those claims.  Jacobsmeyer, who had filed a counterclaim against McCurry, was awarded $105,000 for his injuries, but never collected any part of that judgment.  Jacobsmeyer continued with the St. Louis police department and eventually retired as a captain.

 Officer Marvin Allen’s subsequent career as a St. Louis police officer was short and ended in disgrace.  Two years after the arrest of Willie McCurry, Allen drove his friend Larry King on an armed robbery spree during which King used Allen’s service revolver to rob three people and to exchange shots with a fourth.  The spree began when King, who had already stolen a car, asked Allen to drive him while he went out to “make some money.”  King told Allen he was going to “rip off” a couple who were parked in front of a hotel, and proceeded to use Allen’s service revolver to do so.  They then drove to a restaurant where King robbed another individual, again using Allen’s service revolver.  (This victim shot at the car as King and Allen fled.)  A short time later, King spotted a man riding a bicycle and told Allen he was going to rob him as well.  Unfortunately for King, the bicyclist was himself a police officer, John Rice, who was on his way home from work.  Rice fired six shots at King, hitting him three times.  Allen fled the scene, first in the stolen car and then on foot.   Having emptied his own service revolver, Rice picked up the one King had been using (i.e., Allen’s service revolver) and fired several shots at Allen as he fled. 

At trial, Allen admitted driving King throughout the robbery spree, but denied that he had any idea what King was doing.  Allen also claimed that King used Allen’s service revolver without his knowledge, but could not explain how that could have happened.  Officer Allen was convicted of three counts of armed robbery and one count of attempted robbery, and was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment.  That conviction was overturned on appeal because the trial judge had excluded certain evidence of Allen’s reputation for veracity. The case was remanded for a new trial, and I have not yet been able to trace what happened on remand. 

This page was revised on November 24, 2015, based on newly obtained information.  It may be revised further based on additional research.—David Achtenberg