Cousins v. State

• Decision Date: 08 April 1976
• Docket Number: No. 123,123
• Citation: 354 A.2d 825,277 Md. 383
• Parties: George Calvin COUSINS v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 383

277 Md. 383

354 A.2d 825

George Calvin COUSINS v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 123.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

April 8, 1976.

William T. Wood, Rockville, for appellant.

Arrie W. Davis, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Francis B. Burch, Atty. Gen., David B. Allen, Asst. Atty. Gen., Baltimore, Andrew L. Sonner, State's Atty., and Ronald G. Scheraga, Asst. State's Atty., Montgomery County, Rockville, on the brief), for appellee.

Argued before SINGLEY, SMITH, DIGGES, LEVINE and ELDRIDGE, O'DONNELL, JJ., and RAYMOND G. THIEME, Special Judge.

ELDRIDGE, Judge.

In this case we are presented with the question of whether successive trials on charges arising from what is claimed to be the same criminal transaction are prohibited by the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution or by common law principles pertaining to double jeopardy applicable in this State.

The facts of this case, as alleged by the State, are as follows. Marilyn Neal and Ronald Wood were employed as store detectives by the Hecht Company at Montgomery Mall Shopping Center on December 27, 1974. They were in the men's clothing department when they noticed George Calvin Cousins and Ina Brown touching several articles of clothing but not really appearing to be interested in the clothes. The two detectives continued to watch Mr. Cousins and Mrs. Brown for a few minutes until the pair left that department. Being suspicious, they asked a salesperson to alert them should Mr. Cousins and Mrs. Brown return to the men's department.

Approximately fifty minutes later the two detectives were informed that Cousins and Brown had returned to the man's department. From a vantage point in an adjacent department, Miss Neal and Mr. Wood watched as Mrs. Brown removed leather coats from a display rack and handed them to Mr. Cousins. He placed them in ad fabric suit bag. In all, seven leather coats were taken. Cousins and Brown then proceeded to leave the store, walking down a main aisle past a cash register and through a doorway to an enclosed shopping mall. Mr. Cousins was carrying the suit bag which, because of its weight, he dragged along the floor.

Miss Neal and Mr. Wood followed the pair out of the store, exiting by an adjacent door. Once outside the store and in the public mall, Miss Neal confronted Mr. Cousins, identifying herself as a store detective. She told Cousins that he was under arrest for shoplifting and requested that he return the merchandise. Cousins at first asked what merchandise, but when Miss Neal repeated her demand, Cousins said, 'These are my leathers.' He pointed a knife directly at her. At this time Miss Neal was about two or three feet from Cousins, with Wood to her side and slightly behind her. Upon seeing the knife, she leaned back and motioned Wood to do likewise.

Mr. Cousins and Mrs. Brown continued to walk out of the mall, Cousins dragging the suit bag with one hand and carrying the knife with the other. Neal and Wood followed. When they reached a set of glass doors of a walkway leading to the mall parking lot, Mrs. Brown held the doors open for Mr. Cousins. At this point, Cousins handed the knife to Brown. Mrs. Brown waved the knife at Neal and Wood to keep them away as she and Cousins proceeded to their car on the parking lot. Upon reaching the car, the two got in and sped away. Mr. Wood noted the license plate number of their car. The elapsed time from when all of the coats were placed in the bag to when the pair drove away was approximately two minutes.

Miss Neal and Mr. Wood immediately reported the incident to the police. They swore out a warrant for both George Cousins and Ina Brown on December 27, 1974. The warrant pertaining to Cousins charged shoplifting and an assault upon both Neal and Wood. Cousins and Brown were arrested in the District of Columbia on the same night. Trial on the charges set forth in the warrant was scheduled for February 13, 1975, in the District Court of Maryland, Montgomery County.

On January 29, 1975, an eight count indictment against George Cousins was returned by the Grand Jury for Montgomery County. The indictment charged two counts of larceny, two counts of shoplifting, two counts of receiving stolen property, one count of assault upon Marilyn Neal and one count of carrying openly a weapon with intent to injure.

Trial on the warrant was held on February 13, 1975, before the district court in Montgomery County (Sanders, J.). The State, noting that an indictment had been filed against Cousins charging an assault upon Marilyn Neal, elected to proceed in the district court only on the charge of assault upon Ronald Wood which was not included in the indictment. After hearing the testimony of Miss Neal and Mr. Wood, the district court found Cousins not guilty of assaulting Wood. The court stated that while the evidence was sufficient to establish an assault by Cousins upon Marilyn Neal, it was not sufficient to establish an intent on the part of Cousins to assault Ronald Wood.

Thereafter, Cousins filed in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County a motion to dismiss the indictment on the grounds of collateral estoppel and double jeopardy. A hearing on the motion was held on June 16, 1975 (Shearin, J.). Cousins contended that under the doctrine of collateral estoppel, the State was barred from proceeding on the two counts of the indictment charging assault and carrying a weapon, as his previous acquittal had resolved the ultimate issue in those counts in his favor. Cousins also argued that under the 'same transaction test,' as expressed by Mr. Justice Brennan in a concurring opinion in Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 448-461, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 1197-1202, 25 L.Ed.2d 469, 478-485 (1970), successive prosecutions on charges all arising from the same criminal transaction or episode are barred by the prohibition against double jeopardy. As he had already been placed in jeopardy for an offense arising from the events which occurred at the Hecht Company on December 27, 1974, he argued that to try him on any of the charges in the indictment would be to place him in jeopardy twice for the same offense.

The circuit court denied the motion to dismiss on two grounds. First, it found that no ultimate issue relating to the assault and the weapons charges had been resolved in Cousins's favor. The only issue resolved in favor of Cousins was that he did not assault Wood and not, as contended by Cousins, that the district court had impliedly found that Cousins was justified in resisting an unlawful arrest. In fact, the district court had expressly observed that the evidence presented there was sufficient to find Cousins guilty of assaulting Miss Neal. As to the remaining counts, the court found that even assuming that the same transaction test were applicable, the offenses alleged in those counts were not part of the same transaction as involved in the assault charge before the district court. The theft and receiving offenses, the court pointed out, were completed at the time that the alleged assault took place. Cousins took an immediate appeal to the Court of Special Appeals, and we granted a writ of certiorari prior to a decision by the Court of Special Appeals.

As we recently discussed in Thomas v. State, Md., 353 A.2d 240 (1976), the prohibition against double jeopardy, both under the Fifth Amendment and at common law, bars successive trials as well as multiple punishments for the same offense. See North Carolina v. Pearce, 395 U.S. 711, 89 S.Ct. 2072, 23 L.Ed.2d 656 (1969); Ex parte Lange, 85 U.S. 163, 169, 18 Wall. 163, 169, 21 L.Ed. 872 (1873); Gilpin v. State, 142 Md. 464, 121 A. 354 (1923). And the Supreme Court has held that the principle of collateral estoppel is embodied in the Fifth Amendment guarantee against double jeopardy, barring a second prosecution where the ultimate issues to be litigated have already been resolved in the accused's favor in a prior action even though the offenses may not otherwise be the same, Ashe v. Swenson, supra, 397 U.S. at 445-446, 90 S.Ct. 1189. While Cousins has asserted a plea of double jeopardy based on collateral estoppel with respect to two counts of the indictment, he has also argued that the entire indictment must be dismissed because the double jeopardy principle prohibits successive trials for offenses which arise from the same criminal transaction, and that only one criminal transaction was involved here. It is this issue which we will consider first, for if he is correct, consideration of the collateral estoppel contention would be unnecessary.

Traditionally, the 'same evidence' or 'required evidence' test has been the standard for determining whether different statutory offense are to be deemed the same for double jeopardy purposes. If each offense requires proof of a fact which the other does not, neither multiple prosecutions nor multiple punishments are barred by the prohibition against double jeopardy even though each offense may arise from the same act or criminal episode. Only where one offense requires proof of a fact not required by the other, or where neither offense requires proof of an additional fact, are the offenses deemed the same for double jeopardy purposes, with successive prosecutions and multiple punishments being prohibited. Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 52 S.Ct. 180, 76 L.Ed. 306, (1932); Gavieres v. United States, 220 U.S. 338, 31 S.Ct. 421, 55 L.Ed. 489 (1911); Thomas v. State, supra.

The required evidence test as used in multiple prosecution situations was challenged by Mr. Justice Brennan in a separate opinion in Abbate v. United States, 359 U.S. 187, 196-201, 79 S.Ct. 666, 671-674, 3 L.Ed.2d 729, 735-738 (1959), in which he also delivered the opinion of the Court, and in a concurring opinion in Ashe v. Swenson, supra, 397 U.S. at 448-461, 90 S.Ct. 1189, 1197 as failing to satisfy the underlying principles of the Fifth Amendment's double jeopardy clause. Noting that one of the...