Adams v. State

• Citation: 262 A.2d 69,8 Md.App. 684
• Decision Date: 12 February 1970
• Docket Number: No. 102,102
• Parties: Ronnie ADAMS v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

Page 684

8 Md.App. 684

262 A.2d 69

Ronnie ADAMS v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 102.

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland.

Feb. 12, 1970.

Certiorari Denied May 11, 1970.

Leonard A. Briscoe, Baltimore, for appellant.

John J. Garrity, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom were Francis B. Burch, Atty. Gen., Charles E. Moylan, Jr., State's Atty. and Robert C. Ozer, Asst. State's Atty. for Baltimore City respectively, on the brief, for appellee.

Before MURPHY C. J., and ANDERSON, MORTON, ORTH, and THOMPSON, JJ.

MORTON, Judge.

A life sentence was imposed upon a thirteen year old boy, Ronnie Adams, after his conviction of first degree murder in a non-jury trial in the Criminal Court of Baltimore.

The record discloses that sometime before midnight on the evening of June 1, 1968, Charles A. Snyder, while operating a Baltimore Transit Company bus, was shot and killed in the course of a holdup. Two days later, appellant was surrendered to the police by his mother who also gave them a .32 caliber revolver which was later proven to be the murder weapon. Ronnie Adams gave a written statement to the police, which was introduced into evidence without objection, in which he admitted that he had taken his mother's gun from their home earlier in the evening of the crime, joined his friend Ryor Mills, aged sixteen years, and both met up with another friend, Earl Hill, in front of a shop at the intersection where the crime occurred; and that just prior to the holdup he had given the gun to a girl whom he had seen across the street and that immediately thereafter 'I heard Earl say to Ryor, 'Do you want to hold up a bus?' and Ryor said to Earl, 'If you want to.' and this is when Ryor got the gun from the girl.' His statement continued: 'The girl gave Ryor the gun and as she was handing the gun to Ryor the mumber (sic) bus was coming up Fayette Street and caught the light at the corner of Fayette and Fremont. After this I started to walk over towards the Dixie shop and as I was doing this, I saw Earl and Ryor get on the bus. After Earl and Ryor got on the bus I saw Ryor through the front window pulled (sic) the gun from out of the waist of his pants and point it at the bus driver who was sitting in the driver's seat. And then the bus driver swung at hand that Ryor had the gun in and then Ryor shot him. Then Ryor reached down on the floor of the bus beside the driver and Earl reached into the shirt pocket of the bus driver. After this they both came off of the bus. Earl first. And Earl ran up Fayette Street towards the Dixie shop and Ryor ran up Fremont Avenue towards the projects. At this point Frank Harper, who was standing at the dixie shop with me, said to me, 'Let's follow Ryor.' So then me and Frank ran behind Ryor and we caught up with him on Mulberry Street. * * * And then Ryor opened a little green box which he had taken off of the bus and in the box was some little papers and some Kennedy half dollars. He gave Frank two of them and me two of them and some other boys some of them. After this I went home and he went towards the Dixie shop. But, before I went home, Ryor gave me the gun back. After I got home, I put the gun in some newspaper and put it in the kitchen table drawer. I haven't seen Ryor or Earl since.'

Frank Harper, the first of three witnesses called by the State, testified that while he was looking out the window of the Dixie shop he observed Adams, Mills and Hill playing with a revolver and 'saw them walk across the street toward the bus stop and saw a bus approaching.' According to him, he saw nothing more until he heard a shot, ran out of the shop and saw 'the bus driver slumped in the chair' and saw Earl Hill running 'through the projects' with a 'shiny object' which appeared to be a money changer.

George McCullum testified that he observed Mills and Hill standing together at the bus stop and Adams standing approximately ten to twelve feet away. He next heard a shot and saw Mills and Hill running from the direction of the bus and when asked about Adams, he stated, '* * * I ain't seen him run nowhere.'

Detective George Montgomery testified that he went to appellant's home where he was given a gun which appellant's mother took from a kitchen drawer and that tests at the police crime laboratory disclosed that the bullet recovered from the victim's body was fired from that gun.

It is first contended that the motion for judgment of acquittal should have been granted since, it is argued, the State failed to adduce evidence legally sufficient to overcome the common law presumption that a child under the age of fourteen years is incapable of committing a crime.

Since the Code of Hammurabi (circa 2250 B.C.) and down through the ages, society, under the law, has viewed and treated offenders of tender years in a light differently and more favorably than that accorded adults accused of breaching the law. ¹ Over the centuries and during the evolution of the common law of England, ² there emerged a rule of law governing 'the responsibility of infants' under which an individual below the age of seven years cannot be found guilty of committing a crime; an individual above fourteen years charged with a crime is to be adjudged as an adult; and between the ages of seven and fourteen there is a rebuttable presumption that such individual is incapable of committing a crime. ³ In the absence of any pertinent legislative enactment in this State, the common law principles, as stated above, would appear to govern in Maryland and we so hold. ⁴

In the case at bar, the appellant was shown to be thirteen years, ten and a half months of age at the time the crime was committed. It was, therefore, incumbent upon the State to produce sufficient evidence to overcome the presumption that the appellant was doli incapax, an expression ordinarily employed by the text writers. The proof necessary to meet this burden has been variously phrased: It must be shown that the individual 'had discretion to judge between good and evil'; 'knew right from wrong'; had 'a guilty knowledge of wrong-doing'; was 'competent to know the nature and consequences of his conduct and to appreciate that it was wrong.' ⁵ Perhaps the most modern definition of the test is simply that the surrounding circumstances must demonstrate, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the individual knew what he was doing and that it was wrong.

It is generally held that the presumption of doli incapax is 'extremely strong at the age of seven and diminishes gradually until it disappears entirely at the age of fourteen * * *.' ⁶ Since the strength of the presumption of incapacity decreases with the increase in the years of the accused, the quantum of proof necessary to overcome the presumption would diminish in substantially the same ratio.

Judged by these precepts, and on the record before us, we cannot say that the trial judge was clearly erroneous in concluding that the State had met its burden. The judge below, as appears in the record, made a specific finding that 'the State has rebutted the presumption * * * with evidence which would convince me beyond a reasonable doubt that this defendant is capable of understanding the nature of his acts and is, therefore, such a person to whom guilt could attach or responsibility could attach for his acts.' This conclusion was not precipitously reached by the lower court but was made at the conclusion of the entire trial. It was arrived at only after the trial judge had weighed the demeanor, conduct and comprehension of Adams while being interrogated on the witness stand, prior to trial. ⁷ by both the court and his counsel concerning his understanding of the right to a jury trial. As announced by the judge, his conclusion that Adams understood the nature of his acts was fortified by analyzing the written statement given by him to the police in which he described, in narrative form, the events surrounding the commission of the crime. After carefully scrutinizing the record before us, we cannot disagree with the conclusion of the lower court that the evidence demonstrated, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Adams, who would have reached his fourteenth birthday in two and a half months, was doli capax.

Appellant next contends that the lower court was without jurisdiction to enter the conviction of first degree murder since the conviction was based upon the felony-murder doctrine, viz., an unlawful killing in the course of an armed robbery, and that there was no waiver by the juvenile court of its jurisdiction over the underlying felony of armed robbery. He argues that the juvenile court, absent a waiver of its jurisdiction, as here, had exclusive jurisdiction over the appellant with respect to the underlying felony because he was under the age of sixteen years. We disagree.

Appellant was charged under the statutory, ⁸ single count form of indictment for murder in the first degree. Since this crime is punishable 'by death or life imprisonment', an individual under the age of sixteen, so charged, is excluded from the category of 'delinquent child' by the statute governing juvenile causes which was in effect at the date of appellant's trial. See charter and Public Local Laws of Baltimore City, Flack (1949), Art. 4, § 240(d)(1). ⁹ Acc...