Agresti v. State

• Decision Date: 27 October 1967
• Docket Number: No. 211,211
• Citation: 2 Md.App. 278,234 A.2d 284
• Parties: Francis Anthony AGRESTI v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

Page 278

2 Md.App. 278

234 A.2d 284

Francis Anthony AGRESTI v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 211.

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland.

Oct. 27, 1967.

H. Thomas Sisk, Kensington, M. Michael Cramer, Washington, D. C., on the brief, for appellant.

Jon F. Oster, Asst. Atty. Gen., Baltimore, for appellee, Francis B. Burch, Atty. Gen., Baltimore, and William A. Linthicum, Jr., State's Atty. for Montgomery County, Rockville, on the brief.

Before MORTON, ORTH and THOMPSON, JJ., and J. DUDLEY DIGGES, Special Judge.

ORTH, Judge.

The appellant was convicted of robbery with a deadly weapon by a jury in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, Judge James H. Pugh, presiding, and sentenced to imprisonment for a term of 20 years.

The case went to the jury on the first, third, fifth and ninth counts of the information filed against the appellant. The first count, on which he was convicted, charged robbery with a deadly weapon. The third count charged attempted robbery with a deadly weapon. The fifth count charged robbery. The ninth count charged grand larceny.

At the close of all the evidence the appellant moved for a directed verdict (which we consider a motion for judgment of acquittal, Md. Rules, 755 a) 'as to all counts' and the motion was denied. We think the trial court erred in denying the motion as to the first count. ¹

While participants in treason and misdemanors, if liable, are all punishable as principals, parties to a felony are classified, at common law, as principals or accessories. Principals in the first degree are those who commit the deed as perpetrating actors, either by their own hand or by the hand of an innocent agent. Under common law, persons present, actually or constructively, aiding and abetting the commission of the crime, but not themselves committing it, are principals in the second degree, provided there is a guilty principal in the first degree. Accessories before the fact are those persons who procure, counsel, or command the deed perpetrated, but who are not present, actively or constructively, at such perpetration. Accessories after the fact are those who receive, comfort or assist a felon knowing that he has committed a felony. Clark and Marshall, Crimes, Sixth Edition, § 8.00; Camphor v. State, 233 Md. 203, 205, 196 A.2d 75 (principal in second degree); Thornton v. State, 232 Md. 542, 544, 194 A.2d 617 (principal in second degree); Veney v. State, 225 Md. 237, 238, 170 A.2d 171 ('lookout' is principal); Vincent v. State, 220 Md. 232, 239, 151 A.2d 898 (principal in second degree); Coleman v. State, 209 Md. 379, 384, 121 A.2d 254 (principal in misdemeanors); Watson v. State, 208 Md. 210, 217-218, 117 A.2d 549 (Accessory before and after the fact); Wimpling v. State, 171 Md. 362, 369, 189 A. 248 (accessory before the fact); Davis v. State, 38 Md. 15, 46 (accessory before the fact). An accessory at common law may be made a principal by statute. Thus one who aids, counsels or procures the burning of a dwelling house is guilty of arson, Md.Code (1967 Repl. Vol.) Art. 27, § 6, and one who aids, abets and counsels the breaking of a dwelling house in the nighttime with intent to steal is guilty of burglary, Code, supra, Art. 27, § 30. Except as otherwise provided by statute, Maryland recognizes the distinction between principal and accessory, even though '(t)his distinguishing of the accessory before the fact from the principal is a pure technicality * * * (and) has no existence either in natural reason or the ordinary doctrines of the law. * * * This technical rule (accessory after the fact) has become too fundamental in the common law of crime to be overcome by juridical reasoning.' Watson v. State, supra, 208 Md. at page 218-219, 117 A.2d at page 552, quoting 1 Bishop, Criminal Law, 9th Ed., §§ 673 and 692.

Although at common law an accessory before the fact is liable to the same punishment as the principal, the distinction between them is important in practice unless the distinction has been changed by statute. At common law, an indictment must charge a person correctly as principal or accessory according to the facts and on an indictment charging a person as principal there could be no conviction on evidence showing that he was merely an accessory and vice versa. Clark and Marshall, Crimes, supra, § 8.05, p. 462; Sanders v. State, 1 Md.App. 630, 232 A.2d 555. It is stated in Perkins on Criminal Law (1957), ch. 6, § 8, D, 1 b, page 583:

'The case may be lost in advance either by carelessness in the pleading or by a mistaken notion as to whether the particular defendant was or was not present at the time the crime was committed. One charged with felony as a principal cannot be convicted if the evidence established assessorial guilt, and one charged as an accessory cannot be convicted if the evidence shows him to have been a principal. One may be charged as a principal and as an accessory in separate counts of the same indictment, but the prosecution can be required to elect upon which count it will rely before the case is finally submitted to the jury.'

Md.Code, supra, Art. 27, § 488 provides:

'Every person convicted of the crime of robbery or attempt to rob with a dangerous or deadly weapon or accessory thereto, shall restore to the owner thereof the thing robbed or taken, or shall pay him the full value thereof, and be sentenced to imprisonment in the Maryland Penitentiary for not more than twenty years.'

We cannot read into this language that an accessory to the crimes of robbery or attempt to rob with a deadly weapon is made a principal. Even if it be assumed that an accessory is made a principal thereby, the statute contains no reference to the manner of charging the offense, but provides only for punishment and restoration of the thing taken. As stated in Clark and Marshall, Crimes, supra, § 8.05, page 463:

'Notwithstanding such a statute, therefore, a person indicted as a principal cannot be convicted if the evidence shows that he was an accessory only. But a statute, providing that an accessory before the fact may be indicted, tried and convicted and punished as a principal, will authorize conviction of one charged as a principal showing him to be merely an accessory.' ²

It is clear that § 488 does not so provide.

The weight of authority in other jurisdictions has long supported the rule that, in the absence of statutory authority, on an indictment charging a person with a felony as a principal there can be no conviction on evidence showing he was merely an accessory. In Smith v. State, 37 Ark. 274 (1881) it was held that a statute which stated that 'one who aids, assists, abets, advises or encourages another in the commission of a crime shall be deemed in law a principal and punished accordingly has no reference to the manner of charging the offense' and one who is an accessory cannot therefore be convicted on an indictment charging him as principal. In People v. Campbell, 40 Cal. 129, at page 130 (1870), the Court said:

'The Legislature may make the offenses of accessory before the fact and of principal identical, as to their punishment, and as to their mode, manner and time of trial, but until it becomes unnecessary to set out in an indictment the offense charged to have been committed we submit and analogy and good pleading demand that an accessory before the fact should no more be convicted upon an indictment charging him as principal, than that a party guilty of larceny shall be convicted upon an indictment charging him with burglary.'

People v. Lyon, 99 N.Y. 210, 1 N.E. 673 (1885), State v. Lacoshus, 96 N.H. 76, 70 A.2d 203 (1950) and State v. Colvin, ...