Bozman v. State
Decision Date | 19 May 1949 |
Docket Number | 156. |
Citation | 66 A.2d 401,193 Md. 196 |
Parties | BOZMAN v. STATE. |
Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Appeal from the Criminal Court of Baltimore City; Herman M. Moser E. Paul Mason and John T. Tucker Judges.
Delmas Edward Bozman was convicted of murder in the first degree and he appeals.
Affirmed.
Joseph G. Finnerty, Baltimore, for appellant.
Harrison L. Winter, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Hall Hammond, Atty. Gen., J Bernard Wells, State's Atty. Baltimore City., Wm. J. O'Donnell, Asst. State's Atty. Baltimore City and James F. Price, Asst. State's Atty. Baltimore City all of Baltimore on the brief), for appellee.
Before MARBURY, C. J, and DELAPLAINE, COLLINS, HENDERSON and MARKELL, JJ.
This is an appeal by Delmas Edward Bozman, appellant, from a judgment and sentence to death by the Criminal Court of Baltimore City.
Testimony offered at the trial tended to establish that the appellant, 22 years of age, and a member of the United States Coast Guard, on May 25, 1948, left his ship, docked at Pratt Street, Baltimore City, and with a fellow seaman attended a motion picture show. Later that evening appellant returned to his ship where he secured a revolver which he loaded and he then returned to the city. After spending several hours on the city streets, at about midnight he hailed a taxicab at Druid Hill and North Avenues. He told the driver to take him to 5447 Lynview Avenue where he and his wife had formerly occupied the second floor apartment. After another passenger in the cab had been discharged, the cab proceeded to Lynview Avenue and stopped in the alley in the rear of the 5400 block as the front street was not paved. At that point appellant told the driver: 'This is a hold-up'. He said the driver turned suddenly around and he thought he was going to fight or had a gun. 'All of a sudden' appellant's gun went off and he became frightened and he did not know what he was doing. The cab driver was killed as a result of this bullet wound. Appellant reached over and took a wallet from the right coat pocket of the taxicab driver and ran up the alley and half a block over to Reisterstown. After taking the money out of the wallet he threw it in a hedge on the Reisterstown road. He then boarded a street car and returned to his ship. He used the money to pay bills. He retained possession of the loaded gun after he was transferred to Shark Finn Shoals Lighthouse at Deals Island. He kept the gun under his mattress at the Lighthouse and later removed it to his sister's home at Deals Island. He later hid it near a telephone pole just prior to his arrest. The gun described in appellant's confession was found by the police alongside the telephone pole indicated to them by the accused. An examination of it, together with the bullet found in the body of the deceased, tended to show that the bullet had been fired from that gun.
The appellant contends in this Court that the evidence does not justify the finding of premeditated killing and hence a verdict of murder in the first degree. The indictment in the case charged that the defendant 'on the twenty-sixth day of May, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and forty-eight, at the City aforesaid, feloniously, wilfully and of deliberately premeditated malice aforethought did kill and murder Cornelius McDowell, contrary to the form of the Act of Assembly in such case made and provided, and against the peace, government and dignity of the State.' Appellant contends that the State elected to proceed under Code, 1939, Article 27, Section 478, which provides in part that all murder committed in the perpetration of a robbery shall be murder in the first degree, and that the trial judges stated at the conclusion of the argument: Appellant contends that if the killing was premeditated then it must also have been wilful and malicious and done with deliberation while having been committed in the course of the robbery. It is clear, however, that the trial judges found that the murder was committed in the perpetration of a robbery in violation of...
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