Generette v. State

Per Curiam. The Appellant, Elvard S. Generette, after entering pleas of “not guilty”, was convicted in non-jury trials in the Criminal Court of Baltimore of two separate charges of robbery with a dangerous and deadly weapon. On September 23, 1966, Judge Joseph L. Carter sentenced the Appellant to twenty years in the Maryland Penitentiary in each case, the sentences to be served consecutively. In the first case (Indictment No. 1776/66), one Jerome Wiggins, a bus driver for the Baltimore Transit Company, testified that on February 23, 1966, at approximately 10:10 P.M., he was driving his bus in the vicinity of North Hilton Street in Baltimore City when a man, whom he identified in court as the Appellant, boarded his bus, drew a gun and demanded his money.

The robber extracted approximately seventy-two dol ⁵⁰⁰ lars ($72.00) from Wiggins, placed the money in a brown paper bag, ordered the bus stopped, and hastily departed on foot. There were no other passengers on the bus during the robbery. Approximately three weeks later Wiggins saw the Appellant in a Baltimore restaurant. He placed a call to his employer who, in turn, notified the police.

The police then instructed Wiggins what to do if he should see the Appellant again. About a month later, Wiggins saw the Appellant in the same restaurant. This time he called the police who arrived shortly after the Appellant had, under Wiggins’ watchful eye, boarded a bus. The police, accompanied by Wiggins, stopped the bus and arrested the Appellant on the strength of Wiggins’ on-the-spot identification.

Wiggins subsequently identified the Appellant in a police lineup and, as noted above, pointed to him in court as the robber. The Appellant, after admitting to a rather extensive criminal record, which included several larcenies, testified, without an alibi, that he did not commit the robbery. He asserted that gambling was his principal means of support. In the second case (Indictment No. 1777/66), Charles Zimmerman, also a bus driver for the Baltimore Transit Company, testified that on March 4, 1966, at about 4:12 A.M., he was driving his bus in the vicinity of Franklin and Evergreen Streets in Baltimore City when a man, whom he identified in court as the Appellant, boarded the bus, drew a gun and demanded his money.

Having taken approximately forty-seven dollars ($47.00), the robber fled on foot. As in the first case, there were no other passengers on the bus during the robbery and the prosecuting witness identified the Appellant both in a police lineup and in court. Unable to account for his whereabouts on the date of the robbery, the Appellant, on direct examination, stated “I don’t. know where I was at, but I know I wasn’t where this fellow (Zimmerman) said I was at.” The record indicates that the State had originally charged the Appellant with the January 1966 robbery of one William Stanton, also a bus driver. Stanton, like Wiggins and Zimmerman, had picked the Appellant out of the police lineup as the man who had robbed him. ⁵⁰¹ It was later found, however, that the Appellant was