Burks v. State

¹⁷⁶ MOYLAN, Judge. The appellant, Ricardo Burks, was convicted by a Baltimore City jury, presided over by Judge Ellen L. Hollander, of two counts of second-degree murder and one count of the use of a handgun in the commission of a crime of violence. On this appeal, he raises the following eight contentions: 1. The evidence was not legally sufficient to sustain the convictions. 2.

Judge Hollander erroneously refused to give an instruction on the law of manslaughter. 3. The judge erroneously permitted the State to introduce evidence of kidnapping charges having been filed against the appellant in Baltimore County. 4. The judge erroneously failed to grant a mistrial due to prosecutorial misconduct. 5. The judge erroneously failed to grant the appellant’s motion to suppress physical evidence. 6.

The State was erroneously permitted to make an improper closing argument. 7. The judge erroneously admitted irrelevant hearsay evidence from Sergeant Spanos. 8. The docket entries improperly reflected the sentences actually imposed upon the appellant. Legal Sufficiency of the Evidence The appellant’s first contention is that the evidence was not legally sufficient to have permitted the case to be submitted to the jury.

We disagree. As we begin our analysis, we note the two fundamental flaws in the appellant’s argument. The first is his mistaken belief that this was a case where the State’s proof consisted of “circumstantial evidence alone,” thereby invoking such cases as West v. State, 312 Md. 197 , 539 A.2d 231 (1988) and Wilson v. State, 319 Md. 530 , 573 A.2d 831 (1990). In this case, there were damaging admissions from the appellant himself.

In this case, the appellant was found in possession of the guns that checked out ballistically to have been the murder weapons. In this case, there was the fact ¹⁷⁷ that the appellant led the police to where three murdered bodies had been hidden. In no sense was this case one where the evidence of guilt consisted of “circumstantial evidence alone.” We agree with the appellant that a significant part of the proof of his criminal agency came from his own statements to the police and from his own testimony. Those statements were inculpatory in part and exculpatory in part.

The second fundamental flaw in the appellant’s argument is his mistaken belief that the jury is required either to accept his statements in toto or to reject them entirely. That is by no means the law. The jury was fully entitled to believe those parts of the statements that were incriminating (admissions and declarations against interest have special indicia of reliability) and to disbelieve the self-serving parts of the statements that were exculpatory. There is no all-or-nothing principle involved, and the fact finder enjoys the full prerogative of being selective.

Taking that version of the evidence most favorable to the State’s case, the jury could have found that the appellant went to the home of his brother-in-law, Marvin Willis, at 441 Yale Avenue during the early morning hours of Friday, April 19, 1991, in search of cocaine. The two men went to the basement to “freebase” cocaine. When they ran out of the drug, they left the home to buy more and then returned. This pattern of buying cocaine and then returning to Willis’ basement and fi*eebasing the drug occurred three times.

At some time during the early morning hours, they were joined at Yale Avenue by Derrick Newman, Joseph Austin, and Charles Jefferson, three of the ultimate four murder victims. Newman, Austin, and Jefferson were known cocaine dealers on Yale Avenue. At some time after entering Yale Avenue and going down to the basement, Newman, Austin, and Jefferson were all murdered. Austin died of multiple gunshot wounds, one of which was a contact wound to the head.

Jefferson died of two gunshot wounds to the head. The autopsies revealed that both Austin and Jefferson had unusually high levels of morphine in their blood, indicating a heroin injection. There was no evidence, such as needle ¹⁷⁸ marks or “track marks,” to indicate that either Austin or Jefferson had been regular or long-term heroin users. The Deputy Chief Medical Examiner testified that the amount of narcotics in the two individuals would have rendered them unconscious almost immediately and would likely have resulted in their deaths had they not been shot first.

The third victim, Newman, showed no narcotics in his body. He suffered forty-six stab wounds, and several blunt-force injuries and died of a contact gunshot wound to the head. The weapon that inflicted all three execution-style gunshot wounds to the head was a 9 mm. handgun. According to the appellant, the 9 mm. handgun belonged to Willis.

When the appellant was arrested in Howard County several days later, however, the 9 mm. handgun was in his possession. By his own admission, the appellant was present when Newman, Austin, and Jefferson were murdered. According to his version of the events, he was merely a terrified spectator to the murders. The jury, however, was fully entitled to accept his admission that he was present in the basement at the time of the killings but to reject utterly his explanation of his role.

The appellant was acquitted of having murdered Austin and Jefferson. He was convicted of the second-degree murder of Newman. It was apparently during the early morning hours of Saturday that the appellant and Willis decided that they would have to dispose of the three bodies in the basement. They borrowed a truck belonging to a cousin of Willis, wrapped the three dead bodies in some carpeting, and dumped the bodies in an isolated area in the vicinity of the Baltimore-Washington International Airport.

The appellant subsequently led the police to the spot where the bodies were hidden. Returning to Yale Avenue, the appellant and Willis began to argue with each other. In the last analysis, Willis died of multiple gunshot wounds. Although the appellant claimed that he had to wrestle a gun away from Willis and kill in self-defense, one of the lethal shots was to the back of Willis’ head at close range.

Willis suffered a total of five gunshot wounds. ¹⁷⁹ In addition to the bullet to the back of the head, Willis received one gunshot wound in the upper front chest. The remaining wounds, on the other hand, indicated that Willis was in flight from the appellant. One was to the back of the left chest, another was to the back left shoulder, and yet another was to the left buttock. The appellant was not wounded at all.

After having killed Willis, moreover, the appellant did not summon the police to report a necessary killing in self-defense. Indeed, he lied to his own wife, Cynthia Burks, and to Willis’s girlfriend, Jackie Parran, telling them that Willis was still in the Yale Avenue house and passing on messages to them from Willis at a time when Willis was already dead. By Saturday night, the appellant determined to flee. He took the 9 mm. handgun, which he claimed had belonged to Willis, and a .38, which he claimed had belonged to one of the first three murder victims, and took them with him.

He also stole Willis’s car. Later that night, he abandoned the car but he kept the two guns. They were with him the following morning when he kidnapped Eric Cada and Kimberly Goldscher and commandeered their car. The evidence was ample to support the convictions.

With respect to the killing of Willis, the appellant was admittedly the homicidal agent. He directed a dangerous and deadly weapon not once but five times at vital parts of Willis’s anatomy. That, five-fold, is an adequate predicate from which the jury may infer the intent to kill. The jury was entitled to disbelieve utterly his story of self-defense.

Having done so, the jury’s verdict of guilty of murder followed naturally. With respect to the murder of Derrick Newman, the evidence clearly permitted the rational inference that the appellant was, at the very least, one of the two participants in that murder. His participation in the hiding of the bodies was itself a significant indication that he was a guilty participant and not a terrified spectator. We see no error. ¹⁸⁰ The Defense Burden of Production: Generating a Genuine Issue As To Mitigation The appellant’s second contention is that Judge Hollander erroneously failed to instruct the jury on the crime of manslaughter with respect to the homicide of Derrick Newman.

The contention will not prevail for two reasons. In the first place, it has not been preserved for appellate review. Even if it had been preserved, however, there is utterly no merit to it. We must keep in mind the clear distinction between the killing of Derrick Newman during the early morning hours of Friday, April 19 and the killing of Marvin Willis approximately thirty-six hours later on Saturday, April 20.

With respect to the Sáturday killing of Marvin Willis, the appellant testified that he killed in self-defense. Accordingly, he was entitled to a jury instruction on the subject of manslaughter. The sub-variety of mitigation that might arguably have been available was, of course, that of imperfect self-defénse. The judge fully instructed the jury on manslaughter of the imperfect self-defense variety with respect to the killing of Marvin Willis.

There is no challenge to the jury instructions in that regard. Judge Hollander, however, gave no manslaughter instruction with respect to the killings of Newman, Austin, or Jefferson because the evidence had generated no genuine jury issue of mitigation with respect to any of those killings. At the conclusion of the instructions, she asked whether there was anything that she had forgotten. The appellant’s counsel replied simply, “I don’t recall.” When the judge then asked whether there were any exceptions, the appellant’s counsel excepted specifically 1) to the first-degree murder instruction, 2) to the instruction regarding inferences that may be drawn from circumstantial evidence, and 3) to the judge’s use of the word “rage” rather than “passion” in the manslaughter instruction with respect to the killing of Willis.

There were no other exceptions. A subsequent discussion did occur with respect to the sheet submitted to the jury containing possible verdicts. It did not contain a manslaughter verdict for the charges involving the ¹⁸¹ killings of Newman, Austin, and Jefferson. It was the judge who brought this to the attention of counsel.

In the most equivocal of fashions, appellant’s counsel requested that that possible verdict be submitted to the jury: “The Court: There is no contention of hot blood. “Defense Counsel: Well, I mean, it is borderline, that the other had the gun ... We are going to request manslaughter. ...” Judge Hollander reminded appellant’s counsel that she had earlier agreed that there was no case generated to support any manslaughter theory with respect to the killings of Newman, Austin, and Jefferson: “The Court: ... you [defense] told me you didn’t see manslaughter involved in the first three in the basement and I was trying to find out what it is that made you change your mind now.” The judge let the verdict sheet stand. During the course of its deliberations, the jury sent out a note requesting reinstruction on the subjects of murder, manslaughter, and self-defense. Once again, the judge made it clear that the manslaughter reinstruction had reference only to the killing of Marvin Willis.

Before sending the jury back to resume its deliberations, she asked whether “counsel has anything else they would like me to give.” Appellant’s counsel did not object to the reinstructions as given and as limited. We hold that the issue the appellant now raises was not timely raised below and has not been preserved for appellate review. Md.Rule 4-325(e); Dawkins v. State, 313 Md. 638, 642-643 , 547 A.2d 1041 (1988). Because of the length of this trial and the vast judicial resources that have already been expended to bring it to its present state of resolution, we will now do something that we are not ordinarily disposed to do.

Notwithstanding our holding that this issue has not been preserved for appellate review, we nonetheless make the express and fully considered alternative holding that even if this contention had been preserved for appellate review it could not prevail on the merits. With ¹⁸² respect to the killing of Derrick Newman, the evidence did not generate any genuine jury issue of hot-blooded provocation and a jury instruction on that theory of manslaughter, urged by the appellant, would have been absolutely improper. Only one person now alive witnessed the killings of Newman, Austin, and Jefferson. That is the appellant.

Only one person has any knowledge as to what was in the mind of the appellant at the time of the killings of Newman, Austin, and Jefferson. That is the appellant. The appellant’s testimony in that regard is the only direct evidence introduced in this case on that subject. The appellant testified unequivocally that he did not participate in any way, as a first-degree principal or as an aider and abettor, in the killings of Newman, Austin, and Jefferson.

The appellant’s present theory that he killed Newman in hot-blooded response to the legally adequate provocation of a mutual affray is pure lawyerly speculation as to what might have occurred. A genuine jury issue; calling for instructions, requires supporting evidence, not mere speculation. Even if the evidence could arguably have supported a permitted inference of a mutual affray, there was not the remotest suggestion in the evidence 1) that such arguable provocation generated any “heat of passion” in the appellant or 2) that the appellant deliberately killed Newman in passionate response to that provocation. The mitigation theory of hot-blooded response to the legally adequate provocation of a mutual affray fails in this case for the same reason that a mitigation theory of hot-blooded response to the legally adequate provocation of discovering a spouse in an act of adultery failed in Bartram v. State, 33 Md.App. 115, 175 , 364 A.2d 1119, 1153 (1976), aff'd, 280 Md. 616 , 374 A.2d 1144 (1977): “Mitigation, moreover, was not a legitimate jury issue in this case.

In the circumstances of this case, only the appellant could have injected evidence as to an intentional but hot-blooded killing. She, however, stoutly maintained that the killing was suicidal. ¹⁸³ ... It is hornbook law that if one spouse discovers another in an unexpected act of adultery, a killing of spouse or paramour in hot-blooded fury may lower the blameworthiness from the murder level to the manslaughter level. The blood, however, must indeed be hot and, generally speaking, only the hot-blooded killer can attest to that.” (citations omitted).

The appellant here failed utterly to meet his burden of production. The evidence was nonexistent, let alone legally sufficient, to generate a genuine jury issue as to manslaughter. The judge properly refrained from giving an extraneous instruction on an extraneous subject. Brown v. State, 29 Md. App. 1, 19-20 , 349 A.2d 359, 370 (1975); Blake v. State, 29 Md.App. 124, 130 , 349 A.2d 429, 433 (1975); Stambaugh v. State, 30 Md.App. 707 , 709 n. 1, 353 A.2d 638 , 640 n. 1 (1976); Boone v. State, 33 Md.App. 1, 3-4 , 363 A.2d 550, 552-553 (1976).

The “Reasonable Hypothesis of Innocence” And All That The appellant also took passing exception to the instructions in the following regard: “If the circumstances make one inference just as reasonable as the other, you must give the defendant the benefit of the conclusion that would mitigate his guilt.” That instruction was perfectly proper and we see nothing wrong with it. The appellant’s objection is that it did not employ the precise language used by the Court of Appeals in West v. State, 312 Md. 197 , 539 A.2d 231 (1988). It is of no consequence. The language used was just as good.

West , moreover, was a case discussing the legal sufficiency of evidence, which is an issue exclusively for trial and appellate judges, and has nothing to do with jury instructions. Hebron v. State, 92 Md.App. 508 , 608 A.2d 1291 , cert. granted, 328 Md. 462 , 615 A.2d 262 (1992). The Relevance of Flight The appellant’s third contention is that the court erroneously permitted the State to introduce evidence regarding the ¹⁸⁴ kidnapping of Eric Cada and Kimberly Goldscher. We will recapitulate briefly the connection between the murders and the kidnapping.

Everything occurred over the course of the weekend that ran from Friday, April 19 through Monday, April 22. It was early on Friday morning that the appellant participated with Marvin Willis in the killing of the first three victims in the basement of 441 Yale Avenue. It was late that Friday night or early on Saturday, April 20, that the appellant and Willis disposed of the bodies of the three victims in Anne Arundel County. It was either Saturday afternoon or Saturday evening when the appellant shot and killed Marvin Willis, on whom he subsequently placed all of the blame for all four killings, including Willis’s own.

On Saturday night, the appellant took and then disposed of Willis’s car. Between Saturday night and early Sunday morning, April 21, the appellant found his way to Baltimore County. It was in Owings Mills at approximately 7:00 A.M. that Sunday morning that he kidnapped, at gunpoint, Eric Cada and Kimberly Goldscher. They remained in his presence all day during an odyssey that took them first as far south as the vicinity of Richmond, Virginia, and ultimately wound up late Sunday night in the Terrace Motel in Howard County.

During that odyssey, the appellant had a great deal to say about his flight from justice and about the various options for flight that he considered before deciding upon the kidnapping. When the appellant was arrested at approximately 1:30 A.M. on Monday morning, April 22, he was carrying two handguns, which checked out ballistically to be the murder weapons. Indisputably, the events of Sunday and early Monday morning threw relevant light on the events of Friday and Saturday. The appellant acknowledged at trial, as he does on this appeal, that flight is relevant evidence as an indication of a sense of guilt.

The appellant, however, moved in limine to preclude the State from offering any evidence of the kidnapping at all. The appellant was willing to stipulate to the disembodied conclusory fact that the appellant, for twenty-four hours, had fled the jurisdiction but insisted that that fact ¹⁸⁵ be left disembodied and not fleshed out with any surrounding detail. The State, for its part, was salivating for the introduction of every lurid detail. The court eschewed both extremes and undertook to navigate, detail by detail, the difficult course between Scylla and Charybdis.

In the course of doing so, she took initially as her guiding stars 1) the fact that evidence of flight is admissible to show consciousness of guilt, Hunt v. State, 312 Md. 494 , 540 A.2d 1125 (1988); State v. Edison, 318 Md. 541 , 569 A.2d 657 (1990), and 2) the fact that the sober and intelligent reasoning pattern and the articulate speech pattern of the appellant during the kidnapping odyssey would be very relevant if the jury were later asked by the appellant to conclude that a subsequent statement made by him was involuntary because he was too intoxicated and otherwise “frazzled” to understand what he was doing. The State was asked to submit a precise list of those particular details of the odyssey it sought to introduce. The judge carefully ruled that certain of them were admissible and others were inadmissible. The defense then made a dramatic strategic decision.

It agreed to forego arguing to the jury the involuntariness of the appellant’s statement to the police. Accordingly, she reevaluated her tentative admissibility rulings. With a single guiding star left available, less details were deemed to be relevant and admissible. Throughout this process, the trial judge made careful and thoughtful assessments and evaluations.

On evidentiary rulings of this sort, the appellate court will not presume to second-guess the trial judge or overturn her decisions unless there has been a clear abuse of that wide discretion necessarily vested in the trial judge. We see no such clear abuse in this case. The type of detail that was admitted in evidence included such things as 1) the appellant’s telling his victims that he had escaped from prison and that the two guns had been given to him by a friend, 2) the appellant’s explaining what his “options” for escape were, rejecting the option of an airplane, for instance, because he could not carry his guns with him, 3) ¹⁸⁶ the appellant’s advising his victims to help him look for a van to steal because the Jeep would have been by that time getting “hot,” and 4) the appellant’s considering and rejecting various alternative means of getting away. It is unnecessary for us to analyze in any further detail the carefully tailored rulings made in this regard.

The appellant has not referred to any of the more particularized rulings and has not cited any legal authority with respect to them. The appellant is apparently content to make the general argument that the disembodied fact of flight was admissible but that nothing else that was done or said in the course of the kidnapping was admissible in any way. We reject, as did the trial court, that sweeping and undifferentiated attack on admissibility. Certain things that the appellant said and did during the course of the kidnappings were admissible.

It is not necessary to hold more. Since the appellant has not seen fit to “fine-tune” his complaint, it is unnecessary for us to “fine-tune” our analysis any further as to precisely what was admissible and what was not. One final note, however, is appropriate on the subject of flight. The notion that “flight is relevant as evidence of consciousness of guilt” rolls so trippingly from the tongue that it has regretfully been reduced to little more than a cliche.

It behooves us to give it a moment of more serious contemplation. There are varying degrees of conduct that would qualify as flight. The escalation of such flight would logically give rise to a corresponding escalation of the strength of the inference that might flow from it. Getting into a car and driving from Baltimore to New York, for example, would be a more significant instance of flight than merely walking across the street away from the scene of a crime.

Hijacking a plane to Cuba to avoid detection and/or arrest would obviously be a yet stronger case with a potentially greater inference of guilt that might be generated. In this case, the kidnapping of two innocent persons, the commandeering of their car, the keeping of them hostage for approximately eighteen hours, and the transporting of them from Baltimore County to the outskirts of Richmond and then ¹⁸⁷ back to Howard County is a circumstance more akin to an airplane hijacking than to walking away from the scene of a crime. The aggravating circumstance of the kidnapping strengthens the inference that might be drawn from this particular instance of flight and argues for admissibility on that basis alone. The Purpose of a Declaration of Mistrial: Remedial, Not Prophylactic The appellant’s fourth contention is that the court erroneously failed to grant a mistrial after the prosecutor asked a question that the prosecution had apparently assured all parties would not be asked.

As we approach our analysis of this contention, we point out that the focus is not on whether the prosecutor was guilty of an impropriety or even whether the prosecutor was guilty of a deliberate and flagrant impropriety, but only on what the appropriate sanction should be. The judge agreed with the appellant that an impropriety had indeed occurred and promptly gave a curative instruction. She did not believe, however, that sufficient prejudice had occurred to merit the extreme sanction of a mistrial. We hold that she did not abuse her discretion in that regard.

A mistrial is not a sanction designed to punish an attorney for an impropriety. It is rather an extreme sanction that sometimes must be resorted to when such overwhelming prejudice has occurred that no other remedy will suffice to cure the prejudice. Prior to trial, defense counsel inquired as to whether the prosecutor intended to use any prior convictions in an effort to impeach the appellant’s credibility should the appellant elect to testify. The prosecutor responded that he was not aware of any impeachable offense that could be used for such a purpose.

The court cautioned the prosecutor that he should approach the bench before asking any questions with respect to impeachable offenses. Again, at the close of the State’s case, while the appellant’s counsel was advising the appellant of his right to testify, inquiry was again made of the prosecutor as to whether he had any impeachable offenses ¹⁸⁸ that he would try to introduce. The prosecutor responded, “None that I’m aware of.” The appellant elected to testify. The first question posed on cross-examination was: “Now, Mr. Burks, you have been found guilty in Baltimore County of two counts of robbery with a deadly weapon?” Defense counsel immediately objected and moved for a mistrial.

At a hastily summoned bench conference, the judge roundly upbraided the prosecutor for haying misled both defense counsel and the court. It may be that there was a genuine problem of miscommunication. The prosecutor stood by his grounds that there was nothing impeachable in the appellant’s “prior record” but did not interpret the kidnapping convictions in Baltimore County, arising contemporaneously out of the same larger criminal episode, as falling within the category of something “prior.” The judge continued to chastise the prosecutor’s judgment as “truly ill-advised.” She promptly gave the following curative instruction: “The Court: Members of the jury, I am going to sustain that objection. That means you must disregard the question and there was, I think, not enough time for any answer.

Members of the jury, when I sustain the objection and tell you that you must disregard something, it means that you may never consider it, not now and at any time during the deliberation process. Mr. Burks is not on trial in this court for what happened in connection with the kidnapping and that is, therefore, my instruction to you, that you must disregard it in that context.” Even assuming the worst, however, with respect to prosecutorial intentions, the court did the correct thing. She recognized that the decision as to whether a mistrial is called for is contingent upon the impact of an error and not upon the motivation behind the error. We assess reversible error as did the Court of Appeals in Johnson v. State, 325 Md. 511, 517 , 601 A.2d 1093 (1992): ‘We ascribe no nefarious intention on the part of the prosecutor, but it is the impact of his comments on the jury that is significant, not his intent.” (emphasis supplied). ¹⁸⁹ The appellant, on the other hand, seems so obsessed with the allegedly deliberate character of the error that he almost neglects the more important consideration of prejudice.

If it were, indeed, believed that a prosecutor had perpetrated a deliberate foul, there are sanctions enough available for that: 1) a complaint to the supervising State’s Attorney himself, 2) a verbal reprimand, 3) a citation for contempt, 4) referral to a grievance committee. The declaration of a mistrial, on the other hand, is not designed to serve a prophylactic or reprimanding function. Nor is there any necessary correlation between the egregiousness of an error and the impact of that error. Even an innocent and inadvertent error may occasion great prejudice, calling for a mistrial.

Conversely, the most deliberate and flagrant of errors may give rise to significantly less prejudice, thereby not necessitating the extreme sanction of a mistrial. The judge noted that the jury was already fully apprised of the fact that the appellant had kidnapped Eric Cada and Kimberly Goldscher. She concluded that the jury almost certainly knew that a weapon had been involved in the commission of the kidnappings. The testimony was, of course, that two guns were recovered from the appellant as he was arrested in the act of holding his victims hostage in the Howard County motel.

The evidence that he had forced Eric Cada to use his credit card gave rise to the reasonable inference that he had taken control of his kidnap victim’s property by force or threat of force. It is to be noted, moreover, that the prosecutor’s improper question was never answered. When defense counsel continued to harp upon the prosecutor’s bad faith, Judge Hollander responded, “Not every prejudicial error by a prosecutor requires the declaration of a mistrial.” The trial judge, who was in the best position to assess the relative impact of the question, concluded that irreparable and irremedial harm had not occurred and that the curative instruction should suffice. It was of this superior coign of vantage that the Court of Appeals observed in Wilhelm v. State, 272 Md. 404, 429, 326 A.2d 707 (1974): ¹⁹⁰ “In considering whether, in the first instance, any of the remarks attributed to the prosecutor had the effect of unfairly creating prejudice against the defendant, recognition must be given to the fact that the trial judge, who presides in the arena where the forensic adversaries are engaged, is in the best position to evaluate and assess — in the context in which the remarks are made and their relationship to other factors in the trial — whether they were in fact prejudicial.” Recognizing that this is the type of question that classically is entrusted to the wide discretion of the trial judge, Lusby v. State, 217 Md. 191, 195 , 141 A.2d 893, 895 (1958); Basilikco v. State, 212 Md. 248, 260-261 , 129 A.2d 375, 381 (1957), we cannot say that there was any clear abuse of discretion in this .case in determining that the extreme sanction of a mistrial was not imperatively called for.

The Suppression Motion The appellant’s fifth contention is that Judge Hollander erroneously failed to grant his suppression motion. The suppression motion was aimed at 1) several guns that were recovered when the police crashed into a Howard County motel and arrested thé appellant, 2) a statement that the appellant subsequently gave to Baltimore City police officers, 3) the fact that the appellant directed the police to where three bodies were buried, and 4) evidence with respect to those three bodies. 1. The Warrantless Entry Into the Motel Room: The entry into the Howard County motel room and the arrest of the appellant resulted from an investigation being conducted by Sergeant C.A. Spanos of the Howard County Police Department into the disappearance of two persons, one of whom was a resident of Howard County. After he shot and killed Marvin Willis in Baltimore City, the appellant took the keys to Willis’s car, then took the car itself, and began driving.

He abandoned the car in downtown Baltimore and began walking. He somehow wound up in Owings Mills (presumably ¹⁹¹ by subway). It was there that he encountered Eric Cada and Kimberly Goldscher and kidnapped the two of them at gunpoint. It was the disappearance of Mr. Cada and Ms. Goldscher that triggered an investigation both