Blake v. State
| Citation | 145 A. 185,157 Md. 75 |
| Decision Date | 21 March 1929 |
| Docket Number | 3. |
| Parties | BLAKE v. STATE. |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Appeal from Criminal Court of Baltimore City; George A. Solter Judge.
William A. Blake was convicted of rape, and he appeals. Reversed, and new trial awarded.
Argued before BOND, C.J., and URNER, ADKINS, OFFUTT, DIGGES, PARKE, and SLOAN, JJ.
Robert Barron and Lawrence S. Kaufman, both of Baltimore (David S. Kaufman, of Baltimore, on the brief), for appellant.
John Hubner Rice, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Wm. H. Maynard, Asst. State's Atty., of Baltimore (Thomas H. Robinson, Atty. Gen., and Herbert R. O'Conor, State's Atty., of Baltimore, on the brief), for the State.
The appellant, convicted by a jury of the crime of rape and sentenced to death, brings before this court for review five questions or groups of questions presented by exceptions to action of the trial court.
The testimony was that a young woman returning to her home in the suburbs of Baltimore, about 7:30 o'clock on the morning of March 22, 1928, after working on a night shift at her place of employment, was seized by a young man loitering by a wooded section near her home, dragged into the woods and forcibly ravished. The accused denied that he was present at the time and place specified, or that he knew anything of the crime. As in most of the reported cases, the trial was almost wholly on the question of identity of the man. The testimony that the crime was committed by some man was not replied to. But, of course, as the commission of the crime by some man was not actually admitted, it was essential that it be proved in all its elements; and there was testimony covering these given by the prosecuting witness herself, and by others.
A Mr. and Mrs. Hiss, living near the place of commission of the crime, testified that they were startled that morning, at approximately the time specified by the girl as that of the crime, by an insistent ringing of their doorbell, and, finding at their door this young woman crying and in a hysterical condition, disheveled and somewhat muddy, admitted her and asked what was the matter. They said she told them of having been dragged into the woods and assaulted as just stated, and added, referring to a fresh discoloration and bruise on her neck, that that was where the man had tried to choke her, that he had choked her so hard that her tongue came out of her mouth, choked her so hard that she could not scream until he relaxed pressure, and when he did so, she had screamed. Upon objection to this testimony as exceeding the limits of the mere fact of complaint, made a fact regularly admitted in these cases, the trial court ruled that no statements of the girl's then made concerning the identity of the man, the chief subject of dispute, could be repeated, but that other statements might be repeated. And this distinction has support in some decisions and in the summary of the law by 2 Bishop, Criminal Procedure, § 963, who says: This court in Parker v. State, 67 Md. 329, 10 A. 219, 1 Am. St. Rep. 387, decided that only the fact of complaint could be testified to, not the particulars. And see Legore v. State, 87 Md. 735, 41 A. 60. In these cases, too, the question of identity of the man was the main subject of controversy; and they may leave some room for question as to the scope of a mere complaint, as distinguished from the particulars, if anything more than an answer yes or no is to be permitted to a question whether a complaint was made.
The cases cited by Bishop for the statement just quoted do not clearly support him if he means that the girl's explanation of marks of violence may be repeated. The greater number of the American courts which have excluded particulars of the complaint appear to have taken the view that they could permit only the answer yes or no to a question whether a complaint was made; and that was the English view until 1896, when it was decided that this distinction between the complaint and the particulars of it was based on a misreading of the old nisi prius case upon which it was founded ( Rea v. Clarke, 2 Starkie, 241), and that it was an unreasonable one. Reg. v. Lillyman [1896] 2 Q. B. 167; Russell, Crimes & Misdemeanors (8 Ed.) 903. It had often before been described as unreasonable. Parke, B. in Reg. v. Walker, 2 Moody & R. 212; People v. Clemons, 37 Hun (N. Y.) 580, 587. It has not been the practice in this state to restrict the testimony of a complaint to a mere yes or no answer. Some statement of the nature of the complaint has been regarded as admissible at least for the purpose of showing the character of the act complained of, and we think this a proper application of the rule. And it seems clear that the line of distinction beyond that cannot be one rigidly fixed because of the variations in cases and their details. In this case the details given added nothing to the character of the crime, but amounted rather to a specification of the force which made it a crime. And they did not bear on the question of identity of the man. The girl and several other witnesses testified in court to the same marks and the same causes. In our opinion the previous statement of details objected to, even if beyond the strict limit of the rule, was not so material that its repetition by Mr. and Mrs. Hiss should be treated as vitiating the trial and requiring a second trial of the case. We hold, therefore, that no reversible error was committed in this respect.
A second group of exceptions presents a question of the admission of statements of a police officer who had been summoned at once to the scene of the crime, that there was a mark on the side of the girl's neck as if she had been grabbed by a hand, and that he knew from experience what the gripping strength of a man was, what impression it would bring, what results it would show afterwards, and what a grab of a hand would mean around any one's throat. A physician had previously testified, without objection, that the mark appeared to have been made by finger prints. The objection made to the police officer's testimony is that it amounted to an opinion by an expert witness on a question which the jury should have been allowed to decide for itself. But the jury could not see the mark and judge of its cause. And the evidence does not come within the ordinary category of expert opinion, but is rather that of a direct witness to the mark who had had experience with similar marks and was telling of the similarity. It would seem to be in the same category as the identification of such things as powder marks or odors by men who knew them. Dabney v. State, 113 Ala. 38, 21 So. 211, 59 Am. St. Rep. 92; State v. Buck, 88 Kan. 114, 127 P. 631, 42 L. R. A. (N. S.) 854, Ann. Cas. 1914B, 730. This objection is not well taken.
Exceptions in a third group are to the admission of questions to a police officer called as a witness by the state, and to the accused, on declarations of the prosecuting witness when she first saw the accused at the police station on the night after the commission of the crime. Objection was made on the ground that the repetition of those declarations constituted hearsay testimony, was not rendered admissible by the presence of the accused, inasmuch as there was no admission by him in reply, and his silence or denial was not material under the circumstances. On the direct examination of the prosecuting witness, she had testified that she had gone to the station to examine photographs, and had found one of a man resembling the accused, and while engaged in this she had seen the accused in the corridor with detectives and identified him, and on cross-examination denied that she had at this earlier identification been uncertain and made mistakes, and had identified photographs of men in prison or dead. And she was asked as to previous knowledge by her that the man was to be brought in, and as to preparatory descriptions given to her, and also as to opportunities to see the face of the man during the commission of the crime. Subsequent witnesses were then questioned by the state on this earlier identification at the police station, and three of them testified that the prosecuting witness did then identify the man without prompting; two of the witnesses, still without objection, described the examination of the photographs, and said the girl saw Blake in an...
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Muhammad v. State, 826, Sept. Term, 2014.
...court erred in permitting the mother to recount the victim's narrative of the events surrounding the sexual assault.In Blake v. State, 157 Md. 75, 145 A. 185 (1929), the Court of Appeals made clear that the prompt complaint of sexual assault hearsay exception is not restricted to testimony ......
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