Dunn v. State

¹⁶⁴ Stocicbbidge, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The traverser in the above; entitled cause was indicted in. the Circuit Court for Howard County for larceny and for the receiving of stolen goods, the goods consisting- of a quantity of liquors, including ten gallons of whiskey, forty-five bottles of champagne and fifty-seven quarts of Scotch whiskey, together with certain other wines and liquors. On his trial Dunn was convicted on the second count of the indictment, namely, of receiving the goods knowing them to have been stolen. To the indictment the traverser did not demur but pleaded “not guilty.” The record is extremely brief.

The first so-called hill of exceptions was not signed by Judge Eobstthe, before whom the case was tried, and is therefore not properly before us, so the only error which can be found, and which is called in the record the second bill of exceptions, is in these words : “The State’s Attorney, in his closing argument to the jury, made the following statement: “That in the trial of Dougherty, Mr. Donovan made the statement, Ho get Dunn, the guilty man.’ “To this statement counsel for the traverser (Mr. Donovan) objected and the statement of the State’s Attorney was allowed to go to the jury by the court without having the same stricken from the records, nor did the court direct the jury to disregard this statement. But the court admonished the State’s Attorney, and told him to refrain from such remarks.” Upon its face it discloses that unless the passage quoted is to be deemed and treated as a bill of exceptions there is nothing from which an appeal lay. The method of taking-appeals in criminal cases is specifically set out in section 80 of article 5 of tire Code of 1912, and unless the language already quoted he construed as a bill of exception, there is nothing which this record presents for this Court to pass on. There was no motion for a new trial and, even if there had been, it has been repeatedly held by this Court that an appeal from tire action of the trial court will not reach the ¹⁶⁵ action of that court upon a motion for a new trial.

Archer v. State, 45 Md. 460 . As already shown in the extract quoted, the counsel for the traverser objected to a certain statement of the State’s Attorney, but the same went to the jury without the objectionable language of the State’s Attorney being stricken from the record, nor does it appear that the traverser’s counsel asked that it should he stricken from the record, and no exception w-as taken to any action of the court. This Court cannot, in either a civil or a criminal case, regard an objection interposed by counsel as equivalent to a formal hill of exceptions. In Mitchell v. State, 82 Md. 531 , it was held that, no appeal would lie where no exception