Rucker v. State

• Decision Date: 15 November 1950
• Docket Number: 21,22.
• Citation: 76 A.2d 572,196 Md. 334
• Parties: RUCKER v. STATE. BAILEY v. STATE.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

76 A.2d 572

196 Md. 334

RUCKER v. STATE.

BAILEY v. STATE.

Nos. 21, 22.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

November 15, 1950

Joseph D. Weiner, Baltimore, for appellants.

Kenneth C Proctor, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Hall Hammond, Atty. Gen., and John H. T. Briscoe, State's Atty., Leonardtown, for St Mary's Co., on the brief), for appellee.

Before MARBURY, C J., and DELAPLAINE, COLLINS, HENDERSON and MARKELL, JJ.

DELAPLAINE, Judge.

Joseph Edward Rucker and Samuel S. Bailey were separately indicted, tried and convicted in the Circuit Court for St. Mary's County on the charge of having lottery tickets in their possession. Code 1939, art. 27, sec. 411. The Court sentenced each defendant to serve in the Maryland House of Correction for a term of six months and to pay a fine of $100. The appeals are from the judgments of conviction.

Appellants and three other men were arrested by Sergeant Murray E. Jackson of the Maryland State Police on February 21, 1950, following an automobile accident near Hollywood in St. Mary's County. A Plymouth sedan with Virginia license tags had just run off the road and upset. When the police officer arrived on the scene, five men were near the car, but no one was inside. He inquired who the driver was. Rucker admitted that he was driving the car. He showed his driver's license and his motor vehicle registration card, which indicated that his address was Bowling Green, Virginia, and that he was the owner of the car. The officer looked into the car and saw numbers slips scattered around inside. Then, while the car was being pushed back upon its wheels, some of the numbers slips fell out on the road. The officer asked Rucker 'what those numbers slips were doing in his car,' and he replied only that 'they must have been under the seat.'

The officer then found in the car two paper bags containing a number of sealed envelopes. In the envelopes he found some more numbers slips and various amounts of money which corresponded with the amounts marked on the slips. In testifying about the envelopes, he gave the following description of the contents 'In addition to the amount of money in each envelope, there is a notation of a code number, and immediately below that the amount of money in the bag. The code number is the number of the writer who turns that particular envelope of money in.'

The officer also found more than two hundred dollars in cash scattered inside the car. He thereupon placed the five men under arrest and took them to the county jail in Leonardtown. In the jail he searched them. Rucker had in his pockets some money and also a notebook which contained daily entries of code numbers and amounts of money dating from January 23 to February 21, 1950, which evidently were records of collections from various numbers writers. Bailey, one of the passengers in the car, had in his pockets some money and numbers slips.

The chief contention of appellants is that the numbers slips were inadmissible in evidence on the ground that the search and seizure were unlawful without a warrant. The Bouse Act, Code Supp.1947, art. 35, sec. 5, makes inadmissible in the trial of misdemeanors any evidence procured by illegal search or seizure or by search and seizure prohibited by the Maryland Declaration of Rights. But the law is well settled that if a misdemeanor is committed in the presence or view of a police officer, he may arrest the offender forthwith without first having obtained a warrant to do so. In addition, when a lawful arrest is made, the arresting officer may search the offender and seize incriminating articles connected with the crime, either as its fruits or the means by which it was committed, found upon his person or within his use and immediate control or possession. Heyward v. State, 161 Md. 685, 692, 158 A. 897; Callahan v. State, 163 Md. 298, 300, 162 A. 856; Silverstein v. State, 176 Md. 533, 540, 6 A.2d 465; Fischer v. State, Md., 74 A.2d 34. In arresting a person engaged in unlawful possession or sale, the officer may seize books and papers which are a part of the outfit or equipment actually used to commit the offense and which, though not on the person of the one arrested, are in his immediate possession and control. Marron v. United States, 275 U.S. 192, 48 S.Ct. 74, 72 L.Ed. 231.

In Blager v State, 162 Md. 664, 161 A. 1, the defendant had just stepped out of his automobile when he was accosted by a police officer who noticed a package in his overcoat...