Anello v. State

Delaplaine, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This appeal was taken by Vincent J. Anello, age 21, from a conviction by the Criminal Court of Baltimore on an indictment charging that he and Anthony J. Verella unlawfully took and carried away out of the custody and use of Dewey Farbman a Cadillac automobile of the value of $2,500. Farbman had parked his car in front of his home on Clarinth Road on the evening of February 5, 1952, at ¹⁶⁶ 6 o’clock. He did not lock the doors on the left side of the car.

About 2 o’clock the next morning an automobile speeded past two traffic officers riding in a patrol car at the intersection of Liberty Heights Avenue and Reisterstown Road. The police turned and went in pursuit of the automobile. They followed it into Gwynn’s Falls Parkway, and just as it turned west of the grounds of the Western High School to go south into Warwick Avenue, it got out of the driver’s control and leaped the curb. As soon as it came to a stop three men jumped out and ran across the high school lawn.

The police gave chase and caught two of the men, Anello and Verella, near the bushes on the lawn. The third man escaped. The policemen found that the automobile, which was Farbman’s Cadillac, had been “hot wired,” i.e.., had been tampered with by the insertion of a piece of tinfoil back of the ignition switch to start the engine without an ignition key. The car had been damaged to the extent of about $250.

Defendants claimed that the man who escaped was the only one who was guilty. But they said that they did not know his name other than Sam. They testified that they happened to meet him when they came out of the Little Tavern Shop at North and Linden Avenues. They claimed that Sam said that he knew where to get some girls and that they agreed to go with him, although they had seen him only a few times before.

Appellant testified that he offered to go in his car, but Sam suggested that they go in his, which was parked nearby on Eutaw Place; that Sam had keys with which he unlocked the car, and that he drove the car while Verella sat in the front seat and he sat in the back seat; that after they had gone a short distance, they were arrested by the police. Appellant claimed that it was not until Sam jumped out of the car that he suspected that the car did not belong to him. The Court, sitting without a jury, found defendants guilty, and sentenced Anello to the Maryland House of Correction for 18 months, and Verella to the Maryland ¹⁶⁷ State Reformatory for Males for a period of not more than 18 months. Appellant contends that there is no evidence that he either took and carried away the automobile out of the custody or care of Farbman or aided or abetted any one in taking and carrying it away from him.

He claims that he had no knowledge that the man who escaped had taken the automobile unlawfully, but was riding as an innocent passenger on the back seat. In Maryland it is a misdemeanor for any person, his aiders or abettors, to take and carry away out of the custody or use of any other person any of the enumerated kinds of property, including motor vehicles, although it may appear from the evidence that the offender, his aiders and abettors, took and carried away the property for his or their present use, and not with the intent of appropriating or converting the same. Code 1951, art. 27, sec. 415. This statute originated in 1880 when the Legislature created the misdemeanor of larceny of the use of any horse or other animal or any carriage or other vehicle, though taken for present use, and not with the intent of appropriating or converting the same.

Laws 1880, ch. 164. In 1918 the Legislature expressly included motor vehicles within the purview of the statute. Laws 1918, ch. 422. In 1947 the Court of Appeals held in Wright v. Sas, 187 Md. 507 , 50 A. 2d 809 , that this statute was not repealed by implication by the Legislature in 1943 by the complete revision of the Maryland Motor Vehicle Law, which contains the provision that a person is guilty of a misdemeanor who drives a motor vehicle, not his own, without the consent of the owner of it, and with intent temporarily to deprive the owner of his possession of it, without intent to steal it.

Laws 1943, ch. 1007, sec. 154,