Young v. State

• Decision Date: 13 January 1927
• Docket Number: No. 67.,67.
• Citation: 136 A. 46
• Parties: YOUNG v. STATE.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

136 A. 46

YOUNG

v. STATE.

No. 67.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Jan. 13, 1927.

Parke, J., dissenting.

Appeal from Circuit Court, Allegany County; Frank G. Wagaman and Albert A. Doub, Judges.

"To be officially reported."

Sylvester L. V. Young was convicted of embezzlement, and he appeals. Reversed, and new trial awarded.

Argued before BOND, C. J., and URNER, ADKINS, OFFUTT, and PARKE, JJ.

Omer T. Kaylor, of Hagerstown, and Saul Praeger, of Cumberland, for appellant.

Herbert Levy, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Thomas H. Robinson, Atty. Gen., and Ellsworth R. Roulette, State's Atty., of Hagerstown, on the brief), for the State.

ADKINS, J. Sylvester L. V. Young was tried and convicted on an indictment for embezzlement and sentenced to serve a term of seven years in the Maryland penitentiary. This appeal is from that judgment.

There was a demurrer to the indictment which was overruled. Appellant in his brief does not point out any error in the ruling on the demurrer, and we find none. The transaction out of which the indictment arose was as follows:

Mrs. Mattie L. Carter, the prosecuting witness, purchased a house through the traverser for $1,850. Of this, $500. was paid in cash, and Young borrowed for her $1,200 on first mortgage, and the vendor took a second mortgage for $150. Payments in small amounts, from time to time, were made by Mrs. Carter to Young. Out of these payments the second mortgage was paid and interest on the first mortgage, but the balance of the payments, which were within a few dollars of enough to pay off the entire indebtedness, was used by Young for his own purposes.

Mrs. Carter testified:

"I asked Mr. Young to arrange a mortgage for me so that I could make payments from time to time, as best I could. He said I could pay him just as I felt like it, and just as I got the money. * * * I was to pay the interest and principal to him. I know that when I made payments to Mr. Young, from time to time, he said it would cut the interest down."

Young testified that he had been in the real estate business since 1904, that he had an arrangement with Mrs. Carter how the $1,200 mortgage was to be paid.

"The arrangement was that she would pay me monthly payments at her convenience, and that I would invest and use the money, allowing her the interest thereon until such time as the full $1,200 would be paid. I was to allow her interest on these installments which were to be paid at various times, and when the interest came due on the mortgage I used that interest money to help pay the interest, and she paid me the balance of the interest due. * * * I turned the interest over to the mortgagee, as agreed. I carried out the agreement which I had with Mrs. Carter, with the exception if paying over the $1,200 at the appointed time."

He explained that he could not pay it because of heavy losses from bad investments which left him penniless.

There are 22 bills of exception, all-except 2, which were not pressed, and in which we find no error—to rulings of the trial court permitting testimony to be offered by the state relative to transactions other than those mentioned in the indictment. One of these was with a Mrs. Domberger, another with a Mr. Hottle, and the third with a Mr. Morningstar. The first two were similar to that mentioned in the indictment; the third was of a different character, in that money in this instance was alleged to have been placed with the traverser for investment and improperly appropriated by him to his own use. None of these transactions was connected in any way with or related to that for which the traverser was being tried, or occurred at the same time. The several parties do not appear to have been in any way connected with the prosecuting witness in this case or with each other. There is nothing in the record to show that any of the transactions in any way led up to or promoted the one mentioned in the indictment, or that they, with...