The appellant, Edward Lee Jackson, was convicted on two counts of obstructing the United States Mails by taking letters before they had been delivered to the persons to whom they had been addressed, 18 U.S.C. § 1702. The jury acquitted him of one count and the prosecution voluntarily dismissed another. We affirm the convictions.
Jackson was arrested shortly after midnight of a Thursday by Sergeant *540 Simmons of the Mobile Police Department. He was charged with vagrancy pursuant to an investigation of a local offense, the forgery of a cheek. One Patricia Smith had implicated Jackson in that offense after she had sought to negotiate a check at the American National Bank. Jackson was docketed at the police department at 12:15 a. m., April 11, 1969. He was a city prisoner.
About noon on Friday, April 11, 1969, Sergeant Ogan of the Mobile City Police Department interviewed Jackson concerning the investigation of the forgery of the check. He testified that he read to appellant the
Miranda
[Miranda v. Arizona,
The appellant testified that the Mobile City Police interrogated him twice on Saturday and once on Monday before Postal Inspector Zollie Brown. He testified that they did not give him the Miranda warnings.
On Friday, April 11, 1969, W. J. Shaeffer, an investigative aide with the Post Office Department, was called by the Mobile City Police Department, and was informed that appellant was in their custody. Previously that day, Investigator Shaeffer had interviewed Patricia Smith. She had given him a statement which had implicated the appellant. Investigator Shaeffer went down to the Mobile City Police Department at 3:30 p. m. to interview Jackson. Shaeffer testified that he gave the Miranda warnings, that appellant declined to talk, and that he (Investigator Shaeffer) left immediately.
On Monday, April 14, 1969, Zollie Brown, a Postal Inspector, of eighteen and one half years experience was entering upon the investigation of an alleged mail theft by appellant, Edward Lee Jackson. He was accompanied by Investigator Shaeffer. He interviewed Jackson in the Detective Bureau of the Mobile City Police Department at 9:00 a. m. Inspector Brown testified that he identified himself to appellant, showing his credentials, and read the Miranda warnings to appellant. The appellant was shown Government Exhibits #1 (check in the amount of $52, dated March 6, 1969), #2 (five invoices of purchases on Bankamerieard, signed by Wiley D. Wood, II), and #3 (cheek for $41, payable to Miss Barbara Word), and appellant made incriminating statements. The inspector testified that he did not threaten the appellant physically or psychologically, did not coerce or cajole him, and did not promise him immunity or reward. The appellant made the incriminating statements freely and voluntarily.
Brown showed appellant the check made payable to Edward Lee Jackson and purporting to be signed by Wood, Government Exhibit #1. The appellant then admitted to Inspector Brown that he had seen a letter with a stamp on it containing the blank Wood checks in the purse of Patricia Smith. He further stated that Patricia Smith completed the face of the check, making it payable to him, and that he had gone to the First National Bank of Mobile and cashed the check. Inspector Brown further testified that appellant said at that time that Patricia Smith had told him that she knew of a place where people did not get their mail, that they both went around there that night and that he took mail out of the mailbox. Jackson told the Inspector that the mail was a letter addressed to Wood containing a Bankamerieard. Appellant told the Inspector that he used the Bankameri-card and identified the five invoices, Government’s Exhibit #2. Also, according to Inspector Brown, appellant fur *541 ther stated to him that he had seen the Barbara J. Word check (Government Exhibit #3) in the possession of Patricia Smith, and that they participated jointly in cashing all the checks and using them for living expenses.
At the trial, appellant testified that everything Postal Inspector Brown testified to was true, except the appellant did deny that he took anything out of the mail. He claimed that Patricia Smith was the one who took mail out of the mailboxes.
After Inspector Brown left the jail he presented the case to the United States Attorney and a warrant promptly issued from the United States Commissioner. The United States Marshal had filed a detainer against Jackson, with the police department, on April 11. To further complicate Jackson’s situation, he was rebooked on April 14 as a fugitive from justice in Mississippi.
On April 17, 1969, the Mobile City charge was nolle prossed. The appellant was released by Mobile to the Mississippi authorities pursuant to the fugitive charge. On April 17, the United States Marshal in Mobile forwarded his warrant to his counterpart in Jackson, Mississippi. That official then filed a de-tainer with the Sheriff in Pascagoula.
It is clear that although federal de-tainers were pending Jackson was never in the custody of federal authorities during the month of April.
On May 12, 1969, Jackson was indicted by the federal grand jury on the charges now before us. On May 14 a writ of ha-beas corpus ad prosequendum obtained his custody from Mississippi in order that he might be federally arraigned.
1.
The Rejected Question on the Voir Dire
Prior to the qualification of the jurors, counsel for appellant presented the Court with a written request that certain voir dire questions be asked of the potential jurors. After receiving this request, the Court asked various general questions of the potential jurors, but did not specifically ask any of the questions requested by counsel. After completing its questioning, the Court, addressing itself to counsel for the appellant, stated:
“Now, Mr. Peebles, I have examined the questions that you have suggested here and I think I have generally covered most of them, but if there is anything in particular you want to suggest to me, I want to hear it.”
Whereupon, counsel for the appellant replied:
“Yes, sir, particularly, question No. 14, the last question.”
In reply, the Court stated:
“No, I shan’t ask that, because I will instruct them on that. Does the Government have anything?”
Question No. H, read as follows:
“Are you more apt to believe the testimony of an official of the Post Office Department, solely because he is an official of the Post Office Department, than you are to believe the testimony of the Defendant?”
At the afternoon session the request that Question No. 14 be propounded was rejected for a second time.
It is now said that the refusal to ask Question No. 14 was so unfair as to constitute an abuse of discretion, that it effectively denied the appellant a reasonable opportunity to obtain an impartial jury, therefore error.
Rule 24(a) Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure provides:
“The court may permit the defendant or his attorney and the attorney for the government to conduct the examination of prospective jurors or may itself conduct the examination. In the latter event the court shall permit the defendant or his attorney and the attorney for the government to supplement the examination by such further inquiry as it deems proper or shall itself submit to the prospective jurors such additional questions by the parties or their attorneys as it deems proper.”
*542
Hence, as to the manner in which the
voir dire
is conducted the widest discretion necessarily is reposed in the Trial Judge. United States v. Fernandez-Piloto, 5 Cir., 1970,
In questioning the prospective jurors, the Trial Judge asked if any venireman was a member, active and on duty, of a fire or police department of the state or any subdivision thereof, whether any were conscious of any personal bias or prejudice in any fashion or form in connection with the case, whether any was or recently had been engaged in law enforcement, either directly or indirectly, and whether any one of them knew of any reason why they could not be completely fair and impartial as a juror to the Government on the one side, and completely fair and impartial to the defendant on the other side. Also, the Judge, in refusing to ask the question now under consideration, stated that he would instruct the jury on the law. In a comprehensive charge to the jury, the Judge covered the recognized rules for weighing and evaluating the testimony of witnesses. Specifically, the judge charged that the jurors could consider the relationship a witness bears to the Government as affecting his credibility, and that the defendant’s testimony was to be treated according to the same standards that apply to the testimony of other witnesses.
The appropriateness of an inquiry such as Question No. 14 to prospective jurors is indicated by dictum in Chavez v. United States, 10 Cir., 1958,
Later, the District of Columbia Circuit, over a dissent and then a reluctant acquiescence, held that a refusal to give the instruction is reversible error where the testimony from law enforcement officers is virtually the entire case for the prosecution, Sellers v. United States, 1959,
We hold that the failure to propound Question No. 14 was not error. As a matter of fact, the question, as framed, amounts to an ingenious effort to commit a juror in advance as to how he' will handle credibility choices be *543 tween a, government official and the defendant, before either of them takes the witness stand. The real essence of the question was, “Would you be more apt to believe an official than the defendant?” The question in Sellers, supra was whether “any of the jurors [are] inclined to give more weight to the testimony of a police officer merely because he is a police officer than any other witness in the case ?” 1
Moreover, any possible harm from the failure to ask the question was totally cured by the instructions of the Court, the last thing the jurors heard before they retired to consider their verdict.
2.
The McNabb Issue
Appellant, relying on McNabb v. United States,
Rule 5(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure requires federal officers to take an arrested person before a United States Commissioner without unnecessary delay. The Supreme Court, in applying that rule, has made it abundantly clear that if an arrested person makes an incriminating statement or gives a confession after an arresting officer has failed to comply with Rule 5(a) the statement or confession is not admissible in evidence against the accused. This result obtains without regard to the voluntariness of the statement.
The threshold question is whether the federal authorities had the custody and control of the appellant. Without detention by or at the instance of federal authorities Rule 5(a) is not applicable.
The appellant was arrested by city authorities and was held by them. However, the appellant urges that because of the close cooperation between the Mobile City Police Department and the United States Postal Inspectors his custody
should have been considered as federal
*544
at all times.
The
McNabb-Mallory Rule
thus applied, he says, to exclude all the fruits of the federal interrogation conducted after the reasonable period following arrest. Similar arguments have been frequently made in this Circuit but with almost uniform lack of success. Barnes v. United States, 5 Cir., 1967,
The burden of proving a working arrangement as condemned by the Anderson case rested on the appellant. In United States v. Coppola, 2 Cir., 1960,
“However, to bring a ease within this rule there must be facts as there were in Anderson, not mere suspicion or conjecture. Here, as in United States v. Abel, 2 Cir., 1958,258 F.2d 485 , 494, affirmed, 1960,362 U.S. 217 , 226-230,80 S.Ct. 683 ,4 L.Ed.2d 668 , rehearing denied, 1960, (362 U.S. 984 ),80 S.Ct. 1056 , (4 L.Ed.2d 1019 ), there is no basis on which this court can properly reverse the conclusion of the district judge. The Supreme Court’s decision in that case makes plain that the mere fact that two or more agencies have the same crime or the same suspects on their books and that they are cooperating to achieve a solution does not make one the agent of the other and thus responsible for the other’s acts.
“In the absence of any evidence of collaboration to achieve an unlawful end, we would not be warranted in creating a rule whereby prior cooperation of state and federal officials in the investigation of crime would prohibit the admission of uncoerced confessions made during a detention by state officers which the Federal officials did not induce and were powerless to prevent.”
We have heretofore passed on this question of whether federal custody existed. In White v. United States, supra, involving burglary of a United States Post Office, questioning was done by a postal inspector during several days of confinement in the city jail without a warrant and without commitment. In that case, we said:
“Before the question is reached of ■ whether there was unnecessary delay in taking the defendant before a United States Commissioner, it must first be determined that a federal officer, here Mr. Schubert the Post Office Inspector, had the custody and control of the defendant. The Birmingham City Detectives showed a very high degree of cooperation with and assistance to the Post Office Inspector. Both Mr. Jones and Mr. Schubert testified orally and the inferences and conclusions to be drawn from their testimony [as evidence] so far as the same relate to the admissibility of this evidence were primarily for the District Judge. He had the advantage of seeing and hearing the witnesses. If he believed their testimony to the effect that the defendant was being held under a state charge of burglary *545 and grand larceny on instructions from the Detective Bureau of the City of Birmingham, and that his custody was not turned over to the federal officer until shortly prior to the time that he was carried before the United States Commissioner, then the evidence would not be inadmissible under the McNabb Rule.”
In the instant ease, no witness, including the appellant, testified that Jackson was being held by the Mobile City Police Department at the request of federal authorities. On the contrary, the undisputed testimony was that the appellant was booked on vagrancy charges pursuant to an investigation of a local charge, the forgery of a check. On April 14, 1969, he was rebooked on a state fugitive charge. The end of that day was the first time a federal complaint was lodged against him. He was not questioned thereafter. Mobile released him to another state, not to federal authorities.
There is adequate support for the finding by the District Court that the arrest was made by city officers without inducement or request by the federal authorities, that the detention of the appellant was state detention, not federal detention.
The Sixth Circuit in United States v. Sailer, 6 Cir., 1962,
“The McNabb rule prohibits the use in criminal trial of confessions obtained during illegal detention of a defendant, whether or not the confession is the result of torture, physical or mental. The illegal aspect of the detention must be the failure to bring the charged person before a committing magistrate without unnecessary delay. Rule (5) Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. See Upshaw v. United States,335 U.S. 410 ,69 S.Ct. 170 ,93 L.Ed. 100 . Not only must the legality of the detention be challenged under Rule 5(a) for McNabb to apply, but it must also appear that the detention was ‘by or at the instance of federal officers.’ White v. United States, 5 Cir.,200 F.2d 509 , cert. denied,345 U.S. 999 ,73 S.Ct. 1142 ,97 L.Ed. 1405 . See discussion in Stephenson v. United States,257 F.2d 175 (C.A. 6). * * * No ‘working arrangement’ on this occasion or customary practice concerning same is shown. It results that appellant has not sustained his burden of proving a violation of Rule 5(a), Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. United States v. Leviton,193 F.2d 848 , 854, C.A. 2, cert. denied343 U.S. 946 ,72 S.Ct. 860 ,96 L.Ed. 1350 .”
The Tenth Circuit in Swift v. United States, 10 Cir., 1963,
“Rule 5(a), which requires that a person who is arrested be taken before a commissioner without unnecessary delay, is invoked only when an officer makes an arrest under federal law. It has no application in this instance since the record here is clear that, at the time the statement was made by Swift, he had been arrested on a state charge, and was in the sole custody of state officers.
This Court opined in Brown v. United States, swpra: “The McNabb Rule is inapplicable when the unlawful detention is by State officers not acting in collaboration with federal officers.”
In summary, we hold that Rule 5(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure requiring an arrested person to be taken without unnecessary delay before a committing magistrate has no application to one arrested on a state charge and in the custody of state officers. Therefore, because of the failure of the appellant to prove unlawful collusion between the state and federal authorities, the Trial Court properly admitted appellant’s confession into evidence without violating Rule 5(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and the McNabb-Mallory Rule.
*546 3.
The Mimnda-Westover Argument
We turn now to a disposition of the third issue presented. Here some of the facts are in dispute: The appellant said that he had been interrogated by the Mobile City Police Department shortly after being booked, later in the morning on which he was booked, and two days after he was booked. He further testified that at no time was he ever advised of his constitutional rights by the police officers of the City of Mobile who had interrogated him. On the other hand, according to the Mobile City Police Officer, the appellant was questioned by his department once on Friday, April 11, 1969, at about noon, at which time appellant was read the Miranda, warnings, declined to talk, and was immediately left alone. The officer testified that for two days thereafter, Saturday and Sunday, the appellant was not questioned.
Early in the trial, the Judge, in accordance with Jackson v. Denno,
We perceive no error on this point, see Jennings v. United States, 5 Cir., 1968,
Appellant’s contentions as to the arguments to the jury are of no merit.
The judgment of the District Court is
Affirmed.
Notes
. In Brown v. United States, 1964,
In United States v. Gore, 4 Cir., 1970,
For the reasons stated in the opinion, the Court held that no error had been committed for failure to propound the following question : “Does any member of the jury believe that the testimony of a policeman should be afforded greater credence than the defendant merely because he is a police officer?”
See also, Boss v. United States, 8 Cir., 1967,