Ponder v. State

• Decision Date: 20 February 1962
• Docket Number: No. 142,142
• Citation: 227 Md. 570,177 A.2d 839
• Parties: Elbert PONDER v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 570

227 Md. 570

177 A.2d 839

Elbert PONDER v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 142.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Feb. 20, 1962.

Burton W. Sandler, Baltimore, for appellant.

William J. McCarthy, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Thomas B. Finan, Atty. Gen., Saul A. Harris, State's Atty., and E. Thomas Maxwell, Jr., Asst. State's Atty., Baltimore, on the brief), for appellee.

Before BRUNE, C. J., and HENDERSON, HAMMOND, PRESCOTT and MARBURY, JJ.

PER CURIAM.

The defendant-appellant was prosecuted under an indictment containing six counts charging burglary and related offenses. He was tried before the court, sitting without a jury, and was found guilty generally and was sentenced to one year's imprisonment. He appeals, claiming that the evidence was insufficient to support a conviction for burglary.

If we confine our attention almost wholly, as the defendant does entirely, to the sufficiency of the evidence of burglary, we think that the evidence against him, if believed, is enough to warrant the trial judge in finding him guilty of that offense.

There was evidence from which the trial court could properly find that a burglary of a store had taken place and that goods worth in all $83.72 had been stolen (including three Polish sausages worth 35cents), that the back or alley door of the store had been broken open, that the defendant was running out of the alley a half block away as the police arrived, that he had some of the stolen goods on him (three Polish sausages) and that he admitted having stolen them, though he denied any breaking by him in order to enter and steal and though none of the other loot was found. The trial judge was under no obligation to believe the defendant's denials or explanations. Jordan v. State, 219 Md. 36, 46, 148 A.2d 292, cert. denied, 361 U.S. 849, 80 S.Ct. 105, 4 L.Ed.2d 87; Tasco v. State, 223 Md. 503, 511, 165 A.2d 456, cert. denied, 365 U.S. 885, 81 S.Ct. 1036, 6 L.Ed.2d 195. As those cases and many others, such as Edwards v. State, 198 Md. 132, 81 A.2d 631, 83 A.2d 578, 26 A.L.R.2d 874, Cooper v. State, 220 Md. 183, 152 A.2d 120, and Doyal v. State, 226 Md. 31, 171 A.2d 470, hold, the test of the sufficiency of the evidence in a case tried before the court without a jury, when reviewed in this court, is whether the evidence, if believed, either shows directly or supports a rational inference of the facts to be proved, from which the court could fairly be convinced, beyond a reasonable doubt, of the defendant's guilt of the offense charged.

Even without the defendant's admission to the officer that he stole the sausages, his possession of these recently stolen articles would give rise to an inference of fact that he was the thief. Debinski v. State, 194 Md. 355, 71 A.2d 460; Butz v. State, 221 Md. 68, 156 A.2d 423; Lewis v. State, 225 Md. 474, 171 A.2d 244; Dyson v. State, 226 Md. 18, 171 A.2d 505. Cf. Jordan v. State, supra. And as in the Lewis case, the defendant's possession of these recently stolen articles would also tend 'to support a credible inference that the possessor was the burglar as well as the thief.' (225 Md. at 475-476, 171 A.2d at 245.) A similar inference of fact was held permissible in an armed robbery case, Booker v. State, 225 Md. 183, 170...