Guerriero v. State

• Decision Date: 06 June 1957
• Docket Number: No. 198,198
• Citation: 132 A.2d 466,213 Md. 545
• Parties: John GUERRIERO v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 545

213 Md. 545

132 A.2d 466

John GUERRIERO v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 198.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

June 6, 1957.

Harry Leeward Katz, Baltimore, (C. John Serio and John Carroll Weiss, Jr., Baltimore, on the brief), for appellant.

Clayton A. Dietrich, Asst. Atty. Gen. (C. Ferdinand Sybert, Atty. Gen., J. Harold Grady, State's Atty. and James W. Murphy, Asst. State's Atty., Baltimore, on the brief), for appellee.

Before COLLINS, HENDERSON, HAMMOND and PRESCOTT, JJ., and FLOYD J. KINTNER, Special Judge.

HAMMOND, Judge.

Convicted by the court, sitting without a jury, of assault and carrying a deadly weapon, John Guerriero appeals from the judgment and sentence that followed, of one year suspended, and a fine.

The appellant claims here as he did below that necessity in the form of self-defense justified what he did. He, his brother Charles, and their father conduct a wholesale grocery business in Baltimore. One October evening Charles was parking the firm's truck on the one-way street in front of the store and, in backing, blocked the passage of the automobile of one Adams in which he was riding with his wife. After he had managed to pass, Adams stopped his car, got out and an altercation ensued that was verbal at first but soon developed physical aspects. The appellant's version of what occurred is that Adams had been drinking and used vile language to his brother, threw a wooden 'horse' or trestle weighing fifteen or twenty pounds at the truck, and then with knife in hand walked 'threateningly' towards the truck. Observing this, and fearing for his brother's safety, according to his testimony, appellant ran some fifteen feet to the front of the store, told his wife to call the police, went on into the store, picked up a pistol from under the counter, ran back out to where he had been standing, fired one shot into the air to frighten Adams and then a shot at the ground which ricocheted and went through Adams' ankle.

The prosecution's story of the fracas is that as Adams was protesting the blocking of traffic by the truck, with one foot in his car, which was seventy feet beyond the truck, and one foot on the ground, someone threw a piece of wood three or four feet long at him, which he managed to catch and throw back, that he had a penknife in his pocket but never had it in his hand, and that the appellant fired the shots without necessity or justification when Adams, without any intention of physical violence towards Charles, was standing some distance from the truck.

The printed record reveals a hopeless conflict in the testimony as to the distances involved, that is, how far Adams was from the truck when he threw the trestle or piece of wood, if he did, and how far away he was from the truck, and from the appellant, when the shots were fired. The trial court could well have found from the testimony that Adams threw the wood in an alcoholic pique at the truck, the offending inanimate object, that in the time that it took appellant to run twenty or twenty-five feet to get the pistol and twenty or twenty-five feet back that Adams had not advanced at all towards the truck, or had not advanced appreciably, that if Adams had a knife it had been tossed into his car which had been driven away before the police finished their investigation, although it was here when they arrived, that Charles Guerriero showed no signs of being in fear, or of anticipating serious bodily harm since he remained in the truck, did not roll up the windows of the cab nor drive or attempt to drive away, as he easily could have done, but merely continued his efforts to back his truck up to the curb as he had been doing when he blocked Adams' passage. The testimony in the record permitted the further finding that after Adams had been shot, he continued his verbal barrage at appellant and his brother but apparently made no effort to take physical action, and that when the police arrived the Guerriero brothers were just inside the door of the store and Adams and his wife were right at the door, where the verbal exchange was continuing, without real physical violence. The accusations and counter-accusations of the parties made it difficult for the police, when they arrived, to ascertain just what had happened.

The law of Maryland as to self-defense is clear. To justify an assault on the basis of self-defense, the accused must have had reasonable grounds to...