Cross v. State

Collins, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an appeal from a judgment rendered as the result of a verdict of guilty in the trial of appellant on the charge of unlawful possession of lottery tickets. The single contention is that the money and lottery tickets were not admissible in evidence. ■ Officer Charles Gross, of the Baltimore Police Department, testified that about 2:20 P.M. on August 23, 1951, he, together with another officer, was ordered in .the vicinity of Hollins and Mount Streets, in Baltimore. He was dressed in dungarees at the time.

He parked his automobile and saw a colored boy on a bicycle with a package wrapped in newspaper. He saw the appellant, Leonard Cross, walking up and down the street. The boy rode up to the appellant and tried to give him the package. The officer, about fifteen feet away, heard the appellant say “get away, there is a plain clothes car coming down Gilmor”.

Attached to the cross-bars of the bicycle was this package wrapped in newspaper; The officer looked and saw á sergeant going south on Gilmor Street. The boy on the bicycle rode away'. Officer Cross then saw appellant remove a brown paper-bag fr-om ⁵⁰⁹ his shirt and put it in his hat and walk up to an unoccupied automobile, parked on the street, and place the bag down on the street behind its rear wheels. The officer started to walk toward appellant, who started to run.

The officer caught up to him in about five or ten feet and told him he wanted to know what was in that bag. There was a “scuffle” between the officer and the appellant. The appellant replied: “that isn’t my bag, I never had nothing to do with that bag”. The appellant was then arrested.

The boy came back on the bicycle and seeing that the officer “had” the appellant, rode away before the officer could catch him. The officer then went back and picked up the brown paper bag from the street in the rear of the unoccupied parked car where appellant had placed it. In the bag were 86 slips, 984 lottery numbers, $185.00 “in play”, 5