Kier v. State

• Decision Date: 01 May 1958
• Docket Number: No. 218,218
• Citation: 216 Md. 513,140 A.2d 896
• Parties: Carl Daniel KIER v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 513

216 Md. 513

140 A.2d 896

Carl Daniel KIER v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 218.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

May 1, 1958.

David N. Bates, Dundalk, and William H. Murphy, Baltimore, for appellant.

Charles B. Reeves, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen. (C. Ferdinand Sybert, Atty. Gen., Frank H. Newell, III, State's Atty. and Douglas Bottom, Asst. State's Atty. Baltimore County, Towson, and Samuel W. Barrick, State's Atty. Frederick County, Frederick, on the brief), for appellee. Before HENDERSON, HAMMOND, PRESCOTT and HORNEY, JJ., and JOHN B. GRAY, Jr., Special Judge.

JOHN B. GRAY, Jr., Special Judge.

The appellant was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death by the Circuit Court for Frederick County, Schnauffer and Anderson, JJ., sitting without a jury. The case had been removed to Frederick County from Baltimore County after the cause had been remanded by this court in Kier v. State, 213 Md. 556, 132 A.2d 494.

Counsel for the appellant have raised no question either in their brief or in argument with respect to any alleged errors on the part of the trial court in ruling on the evidence. A review of the record discloses no such error; indeed, all objections to evidence about which there might have been substantial question were resolved in favor of the appellant. The sole question urged on behalf of the appellant is that the evidence before the trial court did not justify a verdict of first degree murder.

The responsibility of this court in a criminal appeal is quite limited. Rule 741, subd. c, Appeal, provides in part as follows:

'Upon appeal the Court of Appeals may review upon both the law and the evidence to determine whether in law the evidence is sufficient to sustain the conviction, but the verdict of the trial court shall not be set aside on the evidence, unless clearly erroneous, and due regard shall be given to the opportunity of the trial court to judge of the credibility of the witnesses.'

It is the duty of this court on an appeal thus presented to carefully review the record and to evaluate the evidence to see whether there is evidence which, if believed by the court below, together with all proper inferences from the facts thus established, would have justified the trial court in its verdict of guilty.

This court is not called upon to determine whether its members are convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of the guilt of the accused. This principle has been so fully and so recently considered by this court that further detailed discussion thereof is unnecessary and undesirable. See Edwards v. State, 198 Md. 132, 151, 81 A.2d 631, 83 A.2d 578, 26 A.L.R.2d 874; Shelton v. State, 198 Md. 405, 84 A.2d 76; Estep v. State, 199 Md. 308, 86 A.2d 470; Berry v. State, 202 Md. 62, 67, 95 A.2d 319, and Chisley v. State, 202 Md. 87, 95 A.2d 577.

The victim of the murder of which the appellant was convicted was a woman who lived with her husband on Charles Street Avenue near Towson. She had gone in her Chrysler automobile to visit her daughter during the forenoon of the day of her death and left her daughter's to return home about 1:15 that afternoon. Her husband returned to their home about 5:00 P.M. and found his wife dead, her body sprawled on the living room floor. She had been almost entirely disrobed. Much blood was lying about and she had obviously been brutally beaten. There were many bruises and lacerations about her face, back of her head, and other parts of her body. There were two wounds, one in her throat and the other in her chest extending some seven inches through the chest cavity to the heart, which apparently had been inflicted with a butcher knife found under her thigh. Either of these wounds would have been fatal within a very few minutes. Entirely aside from admissions made by the appellant to the police and a confession to the witness, Washington, there are clearly established facts which place the appellant at the scene of the crime after the decedent returned to her home. On the previous day, the appellant had appeared at the home of a Mrs. Williams, a neighbor of the decedent, and sought employment. He had furnished Mrs. Williams with his name and address which she recorded on a memorandum. She told him that she would consult her husband and inform the appellant whether his services were desired. The appellant appeared again at the Williams' home the next day (the day on which the murder occurred) and was informed by Mrs. Williams that his services would not be needed. The coat which the appellant conceded to be his was found by the police near the house where the crime occurred and only a few feet from one of its doors. A fingerprint of the appellant was found on the decedent's automobile when it was picked up a short distance from the appellant's home.

The written statement made by the accused to the police and admitted in evidence without objection did not admit that he had participated in the murder, but established the fact that the appellant was in the house where the crime was committed, had his hands on a sword and scabbard with which some of the injuries to the decedent could well have been inflicted, got blood on his hands which he washed off before leaving the house and that he took the keys to the decedent's automobile from her purse on the kitchen table and then left the house carefully, wiping his fingerprints from the door knobs but dropping his coat in his hurry to get away. The statement then indicates that he took the decedent's automobile from her garage and drove in a roundabout way to a point near his home where he parked the automobile, and that after going home he carefully bathed himself, washed out the tub and changed to fresh underwear, storing his used garments in a closet, whence they were later recovered and found to have stains of human blood. It must be noted that nowhere in this statement is there any confession that the defendant murdered the deceased. However, his explanation of approaching the house, observing the body of a murdered woman on the floor and then entering the building through open doors might well have taxed the credulity of the trial court. This court has had occasion to observe in Berry v. State, 202 Md. 62, 67, 95 A.2d 319, 321, that 'The trier of facts in a criminal case is enjoined by law to give due force to the presumption of innocence, and then to proceed cautiously in weighing the evidence; but he is not commanded to be naive and to believe without scrutiny every glib suggestion or farfetched fairy tale whether emanating from State or defense. An indispensible ingredient in judgment, in court as well as out of it, is a modicum of common sense.'

The defendant is further connected with the crime by the testimony of Washington, who was an inmate of the Towson jail at the time the accused was incarcerated there. According to Washington he and the accused were engaged in casual conversation. During the course of this conversation the appellant said 'that he did it, but it was for the police to find out.' What the appellant was talking about becomes clear in the concluding sentence of Washington's testimony at the top of page 67 of the extract. 'He said the lady came in and she grabbed him and hollered. He said he hit her, and he didn't describe any instrument or any thing used in the slaying--he didn't exactly tell me that he used any instruments in the slaying of this lady, Mrs. Bopst'.

Counsel for the defendant urged that the testimony of Washington should be received and considered only with great caution. The colloquies between the trial court and...