Arnold v. State
| Decision Date | 15 July 1955 |
| Citation | 83 So.2d 105 |
| Parties | William J. ARNOLD and Harold Domanski, also known as Harold J. Dumaski, Appellants, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. Augustus W. ARMSTRONG, also known as Gus Armstrong, Appellant, v. STATE of Florida, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida Supreme Court |
L. J. Cushman, Zarowy, St. Jean & Shepard, Miami, for appellants.
Richard W. Ervin, Atty. Gen., and Bart L. Cohen, Asst. Atty. Gen., for appellee.
The appellants, William J. Arnold and Harold J. Domanski, were charged with the offense of assault with intent to commit armed robbery, and in a separate information the appellant, Augustus W. Armstrong, was charged with the offense of being an accessory before the fact to the crime of assault with intent to commit armed robbery. Arnold and Domanski were jointly charged in the same information. Both cases were tried simultaneously before the Judge of the Criminal Court of Record of Dade County, a jury having been waived. We will therefore dispose of both cases with this opinion. The trial resulted in the conviction of the three appellants respectively for the offenses charged in the informations and they were thereupon each sentenced to imprisonment at hard labor in the State Penitentiary for five years.
From the judgments and sentences they now appeal, asserting as grounds for reversal that there was a fatal defect in both informations and further that under the facts Arnold and Domanski could not have been guilty of assault with intent to commit armed robbery, and Armstrong could not have been guilty of being an accessory before the fact to such crime.
The testimony shows that about the middle of April, 1953, the appellant, Armstrong, being then a member of the Miami Beach Police Force, approached one Woodford D. Williamson, the night desk clerk at the Atlantic Towers Hotel, with a scheme to stage a fake robbery. Armstrong suggested that at a selected time he would arrange to have some confederates hold up Williamson who, with keys furnished by Armstrong, would previously have unlocked the hotel safety deposit boxes, where the hotel's 'bank' and the money and other valuables of the guests were held for safekeeping. The details included a plan to make it appear that Williamson had nothing to do with the arrangement. The bandits would enter the hotel, bind Williamson and possibly tap him lightly on the head, bind the regular bellboy on duty, and then enter the safety deposit boxes and remove the valuables, including the hotel 'bank' which was the cash each clerk on duty had available for making change and otherwise operating the business at the desk during his tour of duty.
Williamson reported the suggested plot to the Miami Beach Police who directed him to go along with the idea and continue making plans with the conspirators so that they could be caught in the act. Williamson followed the orders of the Police, and at the arranged time, about 3:30 A. M., April 18, 1953, the appellants, Arnold and Domanski, entered the hotel lobby armed with guns and carrying a satchel of some sort. They tied up the clerk, Williamson, with his consent, and also tied up the bellboy and hit him lightly on the head. The bellboy had no prior knowledge of the scheme. In addition, they proceeded to tie up a guest who unexpectedly happened to be in the lobby. The bandits had expected to find the bellboy but they had not anticipated the presence of the guest. They, therefore, did not come equipped with sufficient rope or wire to bind the latter. One of them undertook to rip an electric wire from the wall to be used to bind the guest and for some reason this resulted in a mild explosion and a flashing of light bulbs or electricity evidently produced by a short or break in the electrical wiring system. This created in the minds of the policemen who had been secreted all around the place the impression that a gun had been fired. At this point the bandits had not yet entered the safe or removed any of the property of the hotel or of its guests. When the explosion, resulting from the severed electric line, occurred, the police officers dashed upon the scene and proceeded to arrest Arnold and Domanski. Neither of the bandits did any shooting but each had a gun, and at least one of the guns was loaded. Domanski attempted to escape, and the police fired their guns wounding Domanski in the shoulder. He did not return the fire. He recovered from the wound.
The result of all this was that because of the premature appearance of the police occasioned by the flashing electricity, brought about by the disconnected electric line, the bandits were prevented from following through with their plan to rob the hotel safe. Armstrong was not on the scene of the crime. His part in the plot consisted of the planning and the arranging for his confederates to do the robbing. He had planned for everything but the uninvited guest.
It is further shown that the clerk had about $200 in the hotel's 'bank' at the time and that the various safety deposit boxes of the guests had been unlocked according to plan, and that these boxes contained various unspecified amounts of money as well as jewelry and other valuables.
The cases came on for trial in October of 1953. The defendants moved to quash the informations on the ground that after stating the court and style of the cases, the introductory part of each information contained the following:
and that the jurat on each information contained the following:
The informations were signed by 'John D. Marsh, County Solicitor, Dade County, Florida', and the oath was made and signed by 'John D. Marsh, County Solicitor, Dade County, Florida', before a deputy clerk of the Criminal Cour...
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