Patterson v. State, 496
Decision Date | 11 July 1974 |
Docket Number | No. 496,496 |
Parties | Mary Theresa PATTERSON v. STATE of Maryland. |
Court | Court of Special Appeals of Maryland |
William G. Salmond, Baltimore, with whom was Gilbert Kramer, Baltimore, on the brief, for appellant.
Gilbert Rosenthal, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom were Francis B. Burch, Atty. Gen., Edwin H. W. Harlan, State's Atty., for Harford County, John A. Goodman and Edward Lilly, Asst. State's Attys., for Harford County, on the brief, for appellee.
Argued before ORTH, C. J., and MOYLAN and POWERS, JJ.
On 7 August 1972 the grand jury in Harford County indicted Mary Theresa Patterson, charging that on 25 June 1972 she murdered Douglas Lynn Patterson. Trial was held before a jury in the Circuit Court for Harford County, beginning on 13 February 1973, and ending on 17 February with a verdict of guilty of murder in the second degree. After sentence was imposed, Mrs. Patterson appealed.
In this Court she raises four questions, as follows:
1. Did the Court abuse its discretion by granting the State's Motion for appropriate Relief and calling Edna Gentile as its own witness during the State's case-in-chief?
2. Did the trial judge abuse his discretion in allowing testimony of two witnesses called by the State as rebuttal witnesses?
3. Did the Court err by insufficiently instructing the jury as to the definition of voluntary manslaughter thus prejudicing the Defendant's right to a fair trial?
4. Did the trial judge commit reversible error by failing to instruct the jury that the prior statements of the witness, Edna Gentile, could be used only for the purpose of impeachment?
Since appellant does not contend that the trial judge erred in denying her motion for judgment of acquittal, a review of all the evidence for sufficiency is not required. Briefly, there was evidence that in the evening of 25 June 1972 the appellant and her husband, Douglas Lynn Patterson, had planned to go out, and appellant had arranged for her mother, Edna Gentile, to stay with their child. Mr. Patterson decided that he did not want to go out, and said so. An argument ensued. At one time, Mrs. Patterson had a butcher knife in her hand. She was standing near where her husband was sitting in a chair. The husband got up out of the chair and fell to the floor. Blood was coming from his chest. Help was summoned. An ambulance, the police, and a physician arrived. Mr. Patterson was dead, of a knife wound in the chest.
Mrs. Patterson testified in her own defense. She said:
She further said that she went in the kitchen, and was washing dishes. She described what followed:
On the morning of trial the State, in a motion for appropriate relief, asked the court to call Edna Gentile as its own witness for the purpose of direct examination by the court and cross examination by both the State and the defense. As reasons, the motion said that the State could not vouch for the veracity of the witness, that her testimony would be material and relevant to the issues and necessary for a full and fair determination of the issues, that later statements made by her vary materially from her first statement to the police, that because of her relationship to the defendant the witness may not be candid in her testimony, and that a miscarriage of justice would result from the failure of the witness to testify.
After taking testimony and hearing arguments on that and other motions, out of the presence of the jury, the court, the following morning, granted the State's motion for appropriate relief.
Before the State closed its case, Mrs. Gentile was called as a court's witness, and was questioned initially by the judge. Thereafter both the State and the defense cross examined the witness.
Appellant contends that it was an abuse of discretion, and therefore error, to call Mrs. Gentile as a court's witness. She does not assert error in any specific question or ruling during the course of Mrs. Gentile's testimony, but contends that by the very act of calling her as the court's witness, the judge diminished and tarnished his role as an impartial moderator, and improperly influenced the jury by creating in their minds suspicion of the appellant's guilt.
'The authority of a trial judge to call a witness in a criminal prosecution as the court's witness on its own motion or at the request of one of the parties has been recognized in all jurisdictions in which the question has been considered.' Annot., 67 A.L.R.2d 538, 540 (1959). 1
The cited Annotation goes on to say, at 541:
'Although the decisions are in accord to this extent, some inconsistencies, if not actual conflicts, appear in regard to when a court may properly exercise such authority; however, the intimation of a majority of the decisions is that it is primarily within the discretion of the court when it shall call a witness for whom neither the prosecution nor the defense is willing to vouch and who appears to possess material evidence.'
And says further, at 541-42:
'In some instances the courts have taken the position that the right of a trial judge to call a witness in a criminal case should not be exercised unless material injustice would otherwise result.'
In 98 C.J.S. Witnesses § 350, at 70-71 (1957) the rule is stated:
McCormick, Law of Evidence, § 8, states:
And in 2 Wharton's Criminal Evidence, (13th ed.) § 503 (1972) the author says:
The rule is well stated by the Supreme Court of Illinois in People v. Moriarity, 33 Ill.2d 606, 213 N.E.2d 516 (1966), a case in which convictions in the trial court were reversed because the trial judge 'abandoned his role of an impartial arbiter, and assumed the role of prosecutor and jury to an extreme degree.' The court said:
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Patterson v. State
...court's own witness during the presentation of the State's case-in-chief. That court, in affirming her conviction in Patterson v. State, 22 Md.App. 13, 321 A.2d 544 (1974), held that 'there was an adequate showing of the need to do so, and that in calling her (as the court's witness) the co......
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Wilson v. State
...considered was not preserved for appeal. Maryland Rule 1085. See also Brown v. State, 203 Md. 126, 100 A.2d 7 (1953); Patterson v. State, 22 Md.App. 13, 321 A.2d 544 (1974), Aff'd, 275 Md. 563, 342 A.2d 660 (1975); Law v. State, 21 Md.App. 13, 318 A.2d 859 (1974), Cert. denied, 272 Md. 744 ......
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