Green v. State, 13

• Decision Date: 20 October 1964
• Docket Number: No. 13,13
• Parties: Clarence H. GREEN v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 334

236 Md. 334

203 A.2d 870

Clarence H. GREEN v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 13.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Oct. 20, 1964.

John R. Hargrove, Baltimore (Howard & Hargrove, Baltimore, on the brief), for appellant.

Robert L. Karwacki, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Thomas B. Finan, Atty. Gen., William J. O'Donnell and Charles E. Moylan, Jr., State's Atty. and Deputy State's Atty., respectively, for Baltimore City on the brief), Baltimore, for appellee.

Before HENDERSON, C. J., and HAMMOND, PRESCOTT, HORNEY, MARBURY and SYBERT, JJ.

SYBERT, Judge.

Clarence H. Green, tried under two indictments in the Criminal Court of Baltimore before Judges Oppenheimer and Harlan without a jury, was found guilty of the first degree murder of James Duffy and the rape of his wife, Naomi Ann Duffy, and received two consecutive sentences of life imprisonment, the judges stating that they desired thus to prevent an early application for parole. In this appeal he contends that two signed statements and a diagram of the scene of the crimes, which he gave to the police while under arrest for other unconnected crimes, were improperly admitted in evidence and that therefore his convictions should be reversed.

The details of the crimes need be summarized only briefly because the questions on appeal must be determined from the events which occurred after Green's arrest. According to the evidence submitted by the State, Mr. and Mrs. Duffy, with their children, were living temporarily on the first and second floors of a house at 1732 North Calvert Street in Baltimore. In the darkness of the early morning of August 24, 1963, Mrs. Duffy was awakened by a scuffle on the mattress upon which she and her husband had been sleeping on the first floor. Assuming that one of the two struggling figures was her husband, she attempted to go to the front door to get help but was grabbed by the intruder, who cut her face from nose to ear with a razor and then continued his struggle with Mr. Duffy, in the course of which he cut Mr. Duffy's throat with a razor, causing his death. Mrs. Duffy went into the next room and switched on the light, at which time she observed Green, who turned off the light, dragged her onto the mattress and raped her, then asked the way out of the rear of the house and fled.

Some seven weeks later, on Sunday, October 13, 1963, at about 3:40 A.M., Green, then seventeen years of age, was arrested under a warrant charging him with assault and robbery (unrelated to the crimes involved here), and was taken to the Northeastern district police station. Green's mother was notified shortly thereafter, but neither she nor any other member of the family came to the station house that day or the next. On the day of his arrest he was interrogated for one and one-half hours, beginning at 9 A.M., concerning the crimes for which he had been arrested, and he confessed to the commission of those crimes and was then returned to his cell.

On the next day, Monday, Green was questioned from forty-five minutes to an hour, beginning at 9 A.M., as to other crimes which had remained unsolved, and was returned to his cell. At 1:35 P.M. on the same day, for the first time, he was interrogated for twenty-five minutes in regard to the Duffy rape-murder case and was returned to his cell. At 2:30 P.M. he was again questioned for fifty-eight minutes about the Duffy case and returned to his cell. At about 9:47 P.M., he asked to use the telephone and was permitted to do so.

Green consented to a polygraph examination on Tuesday, October 15, 1963, concerning the Duffy case. It was conducted at Northeastern and extended from 9 A.M. to 12:45 P.M. The prisoner was then interrogated about the Duffy case until 2 P.M., had lunch, and was questioned further from about 2:30 until 3:05 P.M. He then asked to be returned to his cell to meditate, which request was granted, and he remained alone in his cell for fifteen minutes. Interrogation was resumed about 3:30 P.M. and at approximately 4:45 P.M. Green admitted orally that he was involved in the Duffy case. He then drew a diagram of the scene of the crimes. His admissions were transcribed from 5:40 to 6:25 P.M., and then signed by him. After his evening meal he agreed to re-enact the events of August 24 at 1732 North Calvert Street and did so at 8:30 P.M. and then was returned to his cell at Northeastern. At about 9:20 P.M. he asked and was granted permission to use the telephone. He then said he desired to speak with his mother. A police car brought her to the station house and mother and son conferred. On the next day, Wednesday, at about 2:40 P.M., Green made and signed a second statement closely similar to the one given on the previous day.

The appellant did not testify at the trial. There was no contradiction of the positive testimony of the interrogating officers that from the time of his arrest he was treated properly, fed regularly, permitted to use the telephone when he desired, and that at no time were any force, threats or inducements used to obtain any incriminating admissions from him. No claim is made that he requested counsel, or that he asked to see relatives or friends until after he made the first statement.

In the two statements the appellant admitted that he inflicted the fatal wound upon Mr. Duffy and then had sexual intercourse with Mrs. Duffy. However, he justified his infliction of the mortal wound by stating that he was attacked by the husband with the razor, that he disarmed the husband, and that he delivered the lethal slash while defending himself from further attack. As to the rape charge, he exculpated himself from criminality by averring that Mrs. Duffy enticed him into the house with an offer of sexual relations and that he entered in the belief that she was alone.

While the statements appear to be more exculpatory than otherwise, they were incriminatory in certain respects. They conceded the appellant's presence in the house, his slashing of the husband and his intercourse with the wife. They stated that the fatal blow was struck after the husband had lost his balance in the scuffle and fallen on the mattress; they indicated that at that point the wife was scared and did not wish to have intercourse; they showed that the appellant had 'studied to be a barber', indicating familiarity with razors. Thus, because of the incriminatory aspects, the statements must have been made voluntarily to have been admissible. Stewart v. State, 232 Md. 318, 193 A.2d 40 (1963).

While conceding that the police used no physical force, intimidation or inducements in obtaining the statements and the diagram (which we shall hereinafter refer to as 'the statements'), the appellant contends that they were not made voluntarily because the 'totality of all the circumstances shows very definitely that pressures of various types were brought upon the appellant [so] that his will was overborne' when they were obtained.

We agree with the appellant that the voluntariness of the statements controls their admissibility. As this Court found in Mefford and Blackburn v. State, 235 Md. 497, 201 A.2d 824 (1964), the Supreme Court decision in Escobedo v. State of Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S.Ct. 1758, 12 L.Ed. 977 (1964), does not destroy the voluntariness test. The question of whether Escobedo has any effect on the case before us will be discussed later.

The first circumstance upon which the appellant relies to support his contention that the statements were not voluntary is the 'characteristics' of the appellant, or more specifically, as appellant's brief sets forth: his 'age, intelligence, education, race experience and suggestibility and liability of intimidation'. As to age, the appellant was seventeen years old at the time he gave the statements to the police. As we said in Bean v. State, 234 Md. 432, 441, 199 A.2d 773 (1964), a case involving a fifteen year old Negro youth accused of rape, age alone will not render an otherwise voluntary statement involuntary...