Johnson v. State
| Decision Date | 05 May 1965 |
| Docket Number | No. 260,260 |
| Citation | 209 A.2d 765,238 Md. 528 |
| Parties | Lawrence Henry JOHNSON, Raymond Calvin VanField, Jeremiah Neal and Nickolis Sylvester Chapman v. STATE of Maryland. |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Edward J. Bagley, Upper Marlboro (Joseph S. Casula, Upper Marlboro, on the brief), for appellants.
Robert J. Martineau, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Thomas B. Finan, Atty. Gen., Baltimore, and Arthur A. Marshall, Jr. and Edward P. Camus, State's Atty. and Asst. State's Atty., respectively, for Prince George's County, Upper Marlboro, on the brief), for appellee.
Before HAMMOND, MARBURY, SYBERT, OPPENHEIMER, and BARNES, JJ.
The appellants were indicted by the Grand Jury for Prince George's County for the following crimes: No. 4913 charged the four with rape, assault with intent to rape, and assault and battery. No. 4914 charged them with assault with intent to murder, assault with intent to maim, and assault and battery. No. 4915 charged the four with robbery with a deadly weapon, assault with intent to rob with a deadly weapon, robbery, assault with intent to rob, assault and battery, larceny, and receiving stolen goods. No. 4916 charged kidnapping. All four indictments alleged the various crimes were committed upon Mary Haymaker on January 3, 1964. Each appellant pleaded not guilty and elected to be tried by the court without a jury; they were tried together by Judges Ralph W. Powers and William B. Bowie. At the end of the State's case, motions for judgment of acquittal were granted as to all counts in Nos. 4914 and 4915 and were denied as to all counts in Nos. 4913 and 4916. At the conclusion of the case the court found the appellants guilty of the first count of No. 4913 which charged rape and No. 4916 which charged kidnapping. After motions for a new trial were denied, the court sentenced each of the appellants to life imprisonment. This appeal is from those judgments.
The appellants contend that they were convicted on the basis of evidence obtained by an unlawful search and seizure in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment; that it was reversible error for the trial court to deny appellants' motion for directed verdicts on the rape and kidnapping indictments after the court had found not guilty verdicts on the assault and battery counts in the other two indictments; and that there was not legally sufficient evidence produced in the case to sustain the conviction of rape. We shall consider these contentions in a somewhat different order. The sufficiency of the evidence
Mary Haymaker, the prosecuting witness, age 38, testified that on the night of January 3, 1964 she was returning home from a restaurant in Laurel where she had stopped for something to eat and drink. While driving on the Laurel-Bowie road, she decided to stop by the Railroad Inn and take some food home. As she pulled into the parking lot of the Railroad Inn, she saw some Negroes standing in the foreground. She was hesitant about getting out of her car but She testified that the car was a '59 Cadillac convertible, light color and light top and that there were four men, two of whom had guns. The car drove away at a fast rate of speed. Mrs. Haymaker was held on the floor in the back. She attempted to scream and struggle but was held down by her assailants. Whenever she would say something, she would 'get a knock on the face or a hit in the mouth or hit in the sides.' One of her assailants, whom she later identified as the appellant Neal, held a gun in his hands and threatened her. Approximately a half hour later, the car became stuck in the mud in a wooded area, later identified as Mitchellville, in Prince George's County, where Mrs. Haymaker testified her stockings and undergarments were removed and each of the four men raped her in the back seat of the automobile. Thereafter, the appellant Neal took her about 100 feet from the car 'back in the woods, back in the forest.' Twice she got away from Neal, but he caught her each time and then threw her down, beat her, took the back of her head and buried it in the snow and mud. The next thing Mrs. Haymaker remembers is running towards a light which was in a trailer, later identified as the home of Richard W. Proctor. She pounded on the door of the trailer, was admitted by Mr. Proctor and told him that she had been attacked by a number of men. She was given some treatment in the trailer by Proctor and his wife. Proctor sent his brother-in-law, Jerome Johnson, (a cousin of the appellant, Lawrence Johnson) to the Prince George's Police Station for assistance, and two policemen, in separate cars, followed him to the trailer.
One of the policemen was Corporal O'Neil. On the way to the trailer, Corporal O'Neil saw a light-colored Cadillac convertible in the driveway to the farm, with a truck by it. There were several Negroes standing nearby. Jerome Johnson told the corporal the car did not belong there. Corporal O'Neil found Mrs. Haymaker in the trailer, her face badly bruised and her hands and legs scratched. She told him she had been attacked by several Negroes, in a light-colored Cadillac convertible. The corporal immediately put out a look-out in accordance with Mrs. Haymaker's report. Officer Welsh, the other policeman who went to the Proctor trailer in a separate car, observed the Cadillac and was in touch by radio with the station.
Mrs. Haymaker was taken in an ambulance to the hospital, where she was confined a week. At the hospital, she identified the appellants from a lineup photograph as the men who had attacked her. She subsequently identified each of the appellants at the trial.
A white coat and black purse taken by the police from the trunk of a light-colored convertible Cadillac car, owned by the appellant, Lawrence Johnson, under circumstances which will be hereafter discussed, were identified by Mr. Haymaker as hers. In addition, two rings and a cigarette lighter, also identified by Mrs. Haymaker as her property, were found in Sheriff Walcott's car on January 4, behind the seat where the appellant Neal was sitting, after his apprehension. Mrs. Haymaker testified she had all of these items with her on the night of January 3 but had not seen them since.
Jerome Johnson and several of his brothers, who live on their father's farm a short distance from the Proctor trailer at the end of the road on which the Cadillac became stuck on the night of the alleged crime, testified that they came across the Cadillac sometime around midnight and attempted to free it from the mud. Their cousin, the appellant Lawrence Johnson, and the appellants VanField and Chapman, were identified by Jerome Johnson and his brothers as being at the automobile. After unsuccessfully attempting to free the Cadillac, Jerome Johnson and his brothers obtained a truck and towed the Cadillac out of the mud.
Lawrence Johnson was the only one of the four appellants who testified at the trial. He stated that Mrs. Haymaker was in the parking lot near the Railroad Inn at approximately 11:30 P.M. on January 3 when he and the other appellants came out of another restaurant by the parking lot. Johnson said that Mrs. Haymaker was in a drunken condition and requested she be taken with him and the other appellants. According to Johnson, she wanted to go some place where she could not be seen, so he took her with the other appellants to the isolated place on the Norman Johnson farm, where the automobile became stuck. He stated further that Neal and Mrs. Haymaker went off into the woods as he, VanField and Chapman attempted to free the automobile. Johnson testified that he knew nothing about any alleged robbery or beating of Mrs. Haymaker. He said that, while in the car, he did not see any attack on Mrs. Haymaker, that while he was driving the car Mrs. Haymaker was on the front seat and that, when the car became stuck, he went to this cousin's house and when he returned, Mrs. Haymaker was no longer there.
On the State's testimony, if believed by the triers of the facts, as it obviously was, there was ample evidence to enable the court to be convinced of the guilt of the accused beyond a reasonable doubt. Indeed, there was legally sufficient evidence on the testimony of the prosecutrix alone, which, as a matter of law, need not be corroborated. Leek v. State, 229 Md. 526, 528, 184 A.2d 808 (1962) and cases therein cited. There was material corroboration of her testimony, even apart from the physical evidence obtained from the Cadillac and the sheriff's car, including her condition when she went to the Proctor trailer, and the injuries which required a week's treatment in the hospital.
The appellants contend that there is not sufficient evidence to sustain Mrs. Haymaker's claim that sexual intercourse had been had with her by force. They base this contention on the fact that the doctor who examined her testified he found no evidence of spermatozoa in her. The doctor also testified, however, that she was in the middle of her menstrual period and that because of her condition it would not be likely that any spermatozoa would have remained had she had intercourse at the time of the alleged attack.
The evidence was legally sufficient to sustain the convictions.
The legality of the search and seizure
After Corporal O'Neil had initiated the first look-out, on interviewing Mrs. Haymaker, that several colored males in a white or light-colored Cadillac were wanted for rape, Jerome Johnson and Proctor, who had helped to free the Cadillac from the mud, told the policemen that the automobile in question also had Maryland license plates and an AAA sticker on the rear. A second look-out was issued containing this information.
Deputy Sheriff White, of Prince...
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