Daniels v. State

• Decision Date: 12 April 1957
• Docket Number: No. 124,124
• Parties: Eddie Lee DANIELS v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 90

213 Md. 90

131 A.2d 267

Eddie Lee DANIELS v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 124.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

April 12, 1957.

Charles D. Sanger, Jr., Silver Spring, for appellant.

Stedman Prescott, Jr., Deputy Atty. Gen. (C. Ferdinand Sybert, Atty. Gen., Alger Y. Barbee, State's Atty. and Leonard T. Kardy, Deputy State's Atty., Montgomery County, Rockville, on the brief), for appellee.

Before BRUNE, C. J., and COLLINS, HENDERSON and HAMMOND, JJ., and MICHAEL J. MANLEY, Special Judge.

MANLEY, Special Judge.

The appellant was found guilty of murder in the first degree by a jury at his trial before a three-judge court. He was sentenced to death, from which judgment and sentence he has appealed to this Court.

The indictment under which he was tried, which was returned by the Grand Jury for Montgomery County, charged that Eddie Lee Daniels, the appellant, Richard L. Simmons and James Sullivan, on April 22, 1956, feloniously, willfully and with deliberately premeditated malice aforethought did kill and murder Arthur Chyatte. A severance was granted to the other two defendants, who filed affidavits of removal, and the case as to them was removed to another county for trial. The appellant through his court-appointed attorney filed pleas in which it was alleged: (1) that he is not guilty by reason of insanity at the time of the alleged offense, (2) that he is not guilty because he is insane now, and (3) that he is not guilty. The court overruled the defendant's motion for a directed verdict of not guilty of murder in the first degree. The jury, by its verdict rendered June 12, 1956, found the defendant sane at the time of the commission of the offense, sane at the present time, and guilty of murder in the first degree. Motions for a new trial and judgment n. o. v. were overruled by the court.

The appellant in this Court contends that certain evidence was improperly admitted, and that the trial court should have granted his motion for a directed verdict of not guilty of murder in the first degree.

Meyer Klein and his partner, Arthur Chyatte, owned and operated a business known as Quick Car Wash at 8808 Old Bladensburg Road, Silver Spring, Montgomery County, Maryland, in a building located on the west side of Old Bladensburg Road, near its intersection with Piney Branch Road. The building is approximately 120 feet long by 23 feet wide. Inside this building there is a small office along the north wall and about 10 feet from the front of the building. This office is approximately 4 feet by 10 feet in size. The entrance to it is through a door 24 inches wide facing the front of the building.

Mr. Klein testified that on Sunday, April 22, 1956, preparatory to closing for the day, he went to this office at about five minutes of two. Mr. and Mrs. Chyatte were in the office with him at about 2 o'clock, when Eddie Lee Daniels, a 28 year old colored man, who had been previously employed at the car-wash in November, 1955, for two days, appeared at the door to the office and asked Mr. Klein for 25cents in change so that he might make a telephone call. Mr. Klein gave him the change, and Daniels left. Klein then bent over to put some money left by the customers that day in the safe, when he heard a noise. He then stood up and noticed Daniels slamming the front door of the building and in about a second or so Daniels was in front of him at the entrance to the office. Daniels said, 'This is it, let's have the money'. He had a small black gun in his right hand aimed at the witness. The safe is two feet wide and two feet deep and was located inside the office to the left of the entrance door. At that time, Daniels was about two feet from him and had a white handkerchief like a pillow case covering his face up to his nose. Mr. and Mrs. Chyatte were in back of him in the office. Mr. Chyatte said, 'Just a minute', and as the witness was about to bend down to give Daniels the money, heard the gun click and a shot fired. Mr. Chyatte fell on him knocking him down. Daniels then turned the gun on the witness and said, 'Let's have that money'. The witness was kneeling on the floor. Daniels threw down a white cloth, like a pillow case, in which Klein put rolls of coins, and then Daniels said, 'Let's have the money'. Klein started putting bills in the bag and then Daniels said, 'Let's have them big bills'. He then pulled another handful of money and put it in the bag, when someone knocked on the front door and looked in through the window. Daniels then picked up the bag with the money and ran to the back of the building and through the rear door. Blood from the wound in Chyatte's head was on the right side of Klein's body including his face, hand and leg. The bag in which the money was placed was also covered with blood. Daniels ran down an embankment in the rear of the building and across a used car lot to Piney Branch Road where two negro companions were waiting for him in a green, 1952 Oldsmobile sedan. While running through the rear yard of the car-wash and across the used car lot, the appellant dropped a trench coat that he had been wearing and some of the money from the safe. When he got into the automobile, he dropped down out of sight in the back of the automobile which was driven south on Piney Branch Road toward the city of Washington, D. C. During the time that he was giving the money to Daniels, Mrs. Dhyatte was moaning 'You killed my friend, you killed my husband', and she hollered 'Give him the money'. Mr. Klein then ran out the front of the building and saw Daniels when he went down the steep embankment and ran after him screaming, but when he reached the bank he fell and lost his glasses and could not see anything that happened after that.

Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Kuntz, Jr., of Greenbelt, Md., were looking at automobiles on the used-car lot on Piney Branch Road. Mr. Kuntz was looking inside an automobile. Mrs Kuntz heard a noise at the top of the hill and upon looking up she saw a man running down the hill. At that time he was about thirty or forty feet from her. He continued to run, in what looked to her a crouched position, until he reached Piney Branch Road, where he got in a two-tone green Oldsmobile. She identified the appellant in the court room as the man that she saw. There were two other people in the Oldsmobile which was then in motion, and after the appellant got in the rear seat, it proceeded on Piney Branch Road toward Flower Avenue. She was about 25 feet away when he entered the automobile, and she heard Daniels say the words 'I' and 'kill'. She then returned to the used-car lot and helped to pick up the money that had been dropped by Daniels, and which was later turned over to one of the police officers. She saw on the ground the trench coat which Daniels testified at the trial he had dropped while in flight. She went to the Silver Spring Police Station several days later and identified Daniels from six or eight pictures of different persons that had been shown to her by the police. Mr. Kuntz first saw Klein when he fell down the embankment. Klein was in a state of shock, but he told him about the shooting. Kuntz telephoned for an ambulance, using the telephone in the office at the car lot. He then went up to the car-wash building with Klein. There was no one in the building when they entered, and nothing was moved until the police arrived. He saw an unexpended (loaded) cartridge about a foot outside the office door. This cartridge was subsequently picked up by a police officer, and was admitted in evidence, over appellant's objection.

Barbara Jean Castle, who lives in College Park, was riding in an automobile which turned from Bladensburg Road into Piney Branch Road, at about 2:10 o'clock P.M. on Sunday, April 22, 1956. As the automobile proceeded down Piney Branch Road, she saw a colored man running down the hill behind the car-wash building. He was holding something in his arms. There was a white man following him, waving his arms. The colored man jumped in the back seat of a sea green Oldsmobile which was parked on the road, and which followed the car in which she was riding as it drove along Piney Branch Road, until her car turned off the road. The license number of the Oldsmobile was AW-1475. Later at the Takoma Park Police Station she identified a car as being of the same type with the same license plates as the one that she saw.

The police officers found the live or unexpended cartridge on the mat just outside the office door; an empty or expended cartridge casing, approximately two feet inside the office; and a slug or bullet about three feet inside the office, which were admitted in evidence, over appellant's objection. A cigar box containing the money that was picked up from the ground in the rear of the car-wash and from the floor of the office, although objected to by appellant on the ground of relevancy and materiality, was also admitted, but the appellant does not contend here that this ruling of the court was erroneous.

Dr. Frank J. Broschart, the County Deputy Medical Examiner, made a preliminary examination of the deceased at the scene of the crime, and later the same day, he made a complete examination at a funeral home in Silver Spring to which the body had been removed. The cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage and exhaustion due to bullet wound through the skull. The bullet entered at the base of the skull in the mid-occipital region, and the exit was in about mid-skull two inches to the left of the mid-line. The bullet went completely through the skull, and its direction was upward, forward and to the left, at an angle of about ninety degrees from the base of the skull. There were no other contusions or wounds found.

On April 25, 1956, two officers of the District of Columbia Police Department were looking for Daniels in Washington, D. C. They were cruising in a scout car when they saw him on one of the streets of Washington, and when Daniels ran, they gave chase. One...