Snyder v. State

• Decision Date: 16 November 2000
• Docket Number: No. 139,139
• Parties: William L. SNYDER, Sr. v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

762 A.2d 125

361 Md. 580

William L. SNYDER, Sr. v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 139, Sept. Term, 1998.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

November 16, 2000.

Nancy S. Forster, Asst. Public Defender (Stephen E. Harris, Public Defender, on brief), Baltimore, for petitioner.

James Gentry, Special Asst. Atty. Gen. (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Atty. Gen. of Maryland and Diane E. Keller, Asst. Atty. Gen., on brief), Baltimore, for respondent.

Argued before BELL, C.J., and ELDRIDGE, RODOWSKY,¹ CHASANOW,² RAKER, WILNER and CATHELL, JJ. BELL, Chief Judge.

The petitioner, William L. Snyder, was tried and convicted of the first degree premeditated murder of his wife and sentenced to life imprisonment. He appealed his conviction and sentence to the Court of Special Appeals, which reversed. See Snyder v. State, 104 Md.App. 533, 657 A.2d 342 (1995).³ Following a second trial, the petitioner was again convicted of first degree murder and again sentenced to life imprisonment. In an unreported opinion, the Court of Special Appeals affirmed the judgment. On certiorari to this Court, the petitioner raises two issues: first, whether the trial court erred when it held that facts establishing that the petitioner did not inquire about the progress of the police investigation into his wife's murder were admissible as evidence of his consciousness of guilt and, second, whether the trial court erred by permitting the State to introduce testimony, that seven months prior to the murder, the petitioner and the victim had a physical dispute, and that, at some unspecified date during the marriage, the petitioner hit the victim. Answering the first question in the affirmative and the second question in the negative, we shall reverse.

I.

Mrs. Kay Snyder, the wife of the petitioner, was murdered and, on February 14, 1986, her body was found lying on the side of the road across the street from their home. Seven years later, the petitioner was charged with, and tried for, her murder.

At the petitioner's first trial in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County, the State maintained that the petitioner killed his wife because their marriage was breaking apart and the petitioner wished to retain full ownership of their house and collect as the beneficiary on his wife's life insurance policy. Without forensic evidence or eyewitness testimony linking the petitioner to the murder, the State based its case solely on circumstantial evidence. During both opening and closing statements, the State stressed this circumstantial evidence, contending that it established that the petitioner was the killer. That evidence included the petitioner's behavior the day of the killing, evidence that the killer took pains to delay discovery of the crime, evidence that the murder did not occur during a robbery or sexual assault, evidence of the petitioner's "stormy" relationship with his wife leading up to the murder, evidence that the petitioner and his wife had a "big fight" the evening before the murder, as well as evidence establishing that the petitioner had a financial motive for the murder.

The petitioner denied the charges. He argued instead that he was married to the victim for almost 25 years, that his relationship with his wife was "great and getting better," and that "everything ha[d] been great for [the] last three or four months" before the murder.

A jury found the petitioner guilty of first degree murder and the court sentenced him to life imprisonment. On appeal, the Court of Special Appeals reversed the conviction and remanded for a new trial, having concluded that the trial court erred by admitting an investigating officer's unfairly prejudicial and speculative statements. Snyder, supra, 104 Md.App. at 553-54, 657 A.2d at 352-53.

The petitioner was retried. Similar to the first trial, and over the petitioner's objection, the State presented testimony regarding the petitioner's and the victim's relationship leading up to the murder. A friend of the victim testified that she had a telephone conversation with the victim the night before the murder and that the victim stated in that conversation that she "just had a fight" with the petitioner, during which the petitioner "told her that she was a dead woman." The friend also stated that, at the time of this conversation, the victim "was crying and real excited." "She was upset." "She was scared." The State elicited additional testimony, also over the petitioner's objection, from the daughters of the petitioner regarding a physical dispute between the victim and the petitioner that occurred on July 30, 1985. The trial court stated its reasons for admitting the evidence of the July 30, 1985 dispute:

"I think this is a circumstantial case, and the latest analogy used to always say the links of a chain. Now, the writer is saying strands in a cable makes it even thinner than links of a chain. I think he is entitled to show a continuing atmosphere as being the motive. I agree he has to start somewhere.

"So your objection is noted for the record. I'm going to overrule it and allow it. I think it is circumstantial part of motive."

Once again, over the petitioner's objection, the State was permitted to offer testimony from the investigating authorities regarding the petitioner's conduct during the months and years following the murder. An investigating officer for the State testified that, since February 20, 1986, the day the petitioner voluntarily went to the police station to give "elimination prints,"⁴ the petitioner made no inquiry regarding the status of the police investigation. In closing argument, the prosecutor was thus able to urge the jury to find this lack of inquiry evidence of a guilty conscience. More particularly, he argued:

"If he didn't do it and he was, as he said, a loving spouse that cared about his wife, the relationship, that things were getting better, if that were true, wouldn't he have called the police to inquire at the very least."

The petitioner was again convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. He appealed the conviction to the Court of Special Appeals, where he argued, inter alia, that the trial court erred by admitting the evidence concerning the July 30, 1985 physical dispute and evidence regarding his failure to inquire about the status of the police investigation. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed the conviction, reasoning that "[i]n combination with evidence of [the petitioner's] efforts to hinder the investigation,⁵ [the petitioner's] failure or refusal to maintain contact with the investigating officers was admissible circumstantial evidence of guilt." With regard to the petitioner's relationship with his wife, that court reasoned that evidence of the petitioner's "stormy" relationship with her was properly admitted because, the evidence was:

"not offered to establish a propensity for violent conduct. The State was entitled to establish that appellant had both a personal motive and an economic motive to murder the victim."

The petitioner filed a timely petition for certiorari, which we granted in order to consider the important evidentiary issues raised.

II.

A.

First, the petitioner argues that the evidence offered to establish that he did not inquire about the progress of the police investigation into his wife's murder was inadmissible to prove a consciousness of guilt. He contends that culpability for murdering his wife cannot logically be inferred from the failure to inquire. Citing Bedford v. State, 317 Md. 659, 667-68, 566 A.2d 111, 115 (1989), and Pettie v. State, 316 Md. 509, 519-20, 560 A.2d 577, 581-82 (1989), the petitioner argues that, because, as it is in this case, the failure to inquire is so ambiguous and is subject to so many interpretations, evidence of the lack of inquiry cannot be probative of consciousness of guilt and, therefore, simply is irrelevant.

The State disagrees. It argues that the petitioner misreads the threshold requirement for evidence to be considered relevant, and contends that the trial court properly admitted the evidence. Citing McCormick on Evidence § 185, at 887 (4th ed.1992), the State maintains that most evidence offered at trial has some probative value and that, indeed, virtually all human conduct is subject to more than one interpretation or explanation.⁶ In this case, it argues, the petitioner's failure to inquire into the police investigation was probative on a "hotly contested issue—the nature of [the petitioner's] relationship with his wife." Therefore, the state contends, the ambiguity and competing inferences about which the petitioner complains do not affect admissibility, but rather go to the weight that the trier of fact determines to give the evidence. In sum, the State argues that,

"[t]he jury in this case, looking to the circumstances as whole, could reasonably infer that, if [the petitioner] was a loving spouse, as his counsel insisted he was, he would have called police sometime in [the] months and years following his wife's murder to ask about the progress of their investigation."

B.

The rules governing the admissibility of evidence are contained in Chapter 400 of the Maryland Rules of Evidence. The first rule in that chapter, Md. Rule 5-401, defines "relevant evidence." It provides:

"`Relevant evidence' means evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence."

(Emphasis added). This Court has applied and discussed this definition. See, e.g., Conyers v. State, 354 Md. 132, 176, 729 A.2d 910, 933 (1999),

cert. denied, 528 U.S. 910, 120 S.Ct. 258, 145 L.Ed.2d 216 (1999); Hopkins v. State, 352 Md. 146, 721 A.2d 231 (1998); Smallwood v. Bradford, 352 Md. 8, 26-27, 720 A.2d 586, 595-96 (1998); Merzbacher v. State, 346 Md. 391, 697 A.2d 432 (1997). While often noting the important distinction between weight and admissibility and favoring a policy of broad admissibility,...