James v. State
| Decision Date | 29 April 1966 |
| Docket Number | No. 316,316 |
| Citation | 219 A.2d 17,242 Md. 424 |
| Parties | Arthur S. JAMES v. STATE of Maryland. |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Edward A. Palamara, Rockville, for appellant.
Edward L. Blanton, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen. (Thomas B. Finan, Atty. Gen., Baltimore, and Leonard T. Kardy, State's Atty. for Montgomery County, Rockville, on the brief), for appellee.
Before PRESCOTT, C. J., MARBURY, OPPENHEIMER and McWILLIAMS, JJ., and E. MACKALL CHILDS, Special Judge.
On August 14, 1963 at 12:45 P.M. the appellant, a resident of Washington, D. C. and one Frank Gorham were apprehended by the Montgomery County police in the act of ransacking a private residence in Silver Spring.
Linda Wehunt, age 15 years, testified that she was alone in her residence when she heard a knock at the front door. She looked out and saw the appellant and a man later identified as Gorham, but having been instructed never to answer the door to strangers in her parents' absence, she did nothing. After several knocks, the appellant and his accomplice got into their car which was in the driveway, drove about sixty feet away from the residence and parked. Several minutes later they returned and again knocked on the front door. Upon receiving no response they went to the rear door and knocked. From thence, they went to the side entrance and when their knocks again went unanswered they broke the glass in the door and entered.
The witness, terrified by these activities, ran to her bedroom and crawled under the bed. Fortunately, there was a phone in her bedroom, and while the intruders were engaged in looting the downstairs, Linda phoned the police. In the time intervening between her call and the arrival of the police, appellant and Gorham stacked in the upstairs hall two suit cases, a shotgun, radios, record player, clocks, a jar of money and suits, preparatory to transporting these articles to their car. During the course of their depredations they had even moved the bed under which Linda was hiding, but were unaware of her presence.
On arraignment, the Defendant pleaded nor guilty to a charge of housebreaking; however, at the trial at which he was represented by counsel, he, before Judge James H. Pugh, stated that he desired to withdraw his former plea and enter a plea of guilty. The colloquy which ensued is as follows:
Call the witness.
During the course of the testimony in which the Defendant participated the Court made a point of asking where the Defendant was from and was told Washington. He then inquired if the Defendant were born and raised in Washington. At the end of the case, sentencing was deferred pending a probation report which revealed that James had previously not incurred a criminal record in Maryland, but had several minor infractions listed against him in the District of Columbia.
The Court after reviewing the report, sentenced the traverser to ten years' confinement in the Maryland Penitentiary. This sentence, of course, is permitted by statute for this type of housebreaking. Frank Gorham, was later sentenced to three years for his participation in the crime by another judge.
A part of the court's remarks during sentencing were as follows:
'I don't know what you were thinking about when you went into this house, except one think; that is, to go in there and steal. This little girl underneath the bed just waiting, shivering and frightened to death, you two men in that house.
'The Legislature of Maryland has changed, or made an offense of breaking in a dwelling house in the day time housebreaking. (If) this were at nighttime it would be burglary. But it is burglary in the daytime, and burglary in the daytime, to this Member of the Court, is the same thing as burglary at nighttime, where you sneak in this place and try to burglarize and do in fact burglarize the house with the little girl there. I don't know what you would have done if that little girl had made her presence known.
'The Court has no sympathy with you, and (is) not going to give you any. * * *'
The appellant presents three questions for our consideration, but they may conveniently be disposed of under two headings. First, did the trial judge have sufficient information or evidence to show that the accused voluntarily wanted to change his plea of not guilty to guilty, and that the accused understood the nature and consequence of a guilty plea? Second, was the maximum sentence imposed on the appellant influenced or determined by improper motives of the sentencing judge?
The Change of Plea.
Although there is authority in the federal court system and our own that the voluntary nature of a defendant's plea must be clearly established prior to a court's accepting a guilty plea, we know of no Maryland case nor do our own rules of procedure require any specific ritual to be followed by a trial judge in order to satisfy himself of the voluntary character of the plea and of the fact that the defendant understands the nature and effect of a plea of guilty. Formerly, a plea of guilty by a defendant represented by counsel and capable of participating in his own defense was accepted almost as a matter of course in Maryland. Jones v. State, 221 Md. 141, 156 A.2d 421; Adams v. State, 224 Md. 141, 167 A.2d 94. And, we have consistently held that a plea of guilty may be entered under circumstances showing a voluntary desire on the part of the accused to do so, with an intelligent understanding of the nature of the offense to which he is pleading guilty and the possible consequences of such a plea. The acceptance of such a plea will not be set aside on appeal. Cooper v. State, 231 Md. 248, 189 A.2d 620; Gleaton v. State, 235 Md. 271, 201 A.2d 353. Although we consider the inquiry as to the voluntary nature of the plea undertaken by the trial judge in this case as verging upon the minimal, we are not prepared to go so far as to hold that an accused, who is represented by experienced counsel and who has, by the accused's own...
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