Hackley v. State

Hammond, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellant Hackley wras charged in one indictment, having two counts, with breaking and entering the Silver Theater in the Silver Spring Shopping Center in Montgomery County, (a) with the intent to steal the personal goods of another of the value of one hundred dollars or more (a violation of Code (1964 Cum. Supp.), Art. 27, Sec. 32), and (b) with the intent to steal the goods and chattels of another under the value of one hundred dollars (a violation of Code (1957), Art. 27, Sec. 342). In another indictment he was charged with the malicious destruction of property in the Silver Theater.

The charges were tried together before a jury which reached verdicts of not guilty of breaking with felonious intent and not guilty of malicious destruction of property, but guilty of breaking and entering with intent to steal personal property of a value of less than one hundred dollars. Hackley claims on appeal that the trial court erred in deny ⁵⁶⁸ ing his motion for judgment of acquittal, made on two grounds: (a) the indictment charged the breaking of a storehouse and the testimony showed the breaking of a motion picture theater; (b) the State did not prove the allegations of the indictment as to the ownership of the theater. The count on which the jury found the appellant guilty identified the storehouse which had been entered as the Silver Theater. The proof was that the Silver Theater was a motion picture theater, that it had been broken into, that efforts had been made to open the safe, and that “the storage cabinets” in which the popcorn was stored had been broken into, as had the refrigerator in which the ice cream sold at the theater was stored.

We think the Silver Theater was a storehouse within the meaning of Sec. 342 of Art. 27 of the Code as the cases in this Court have interpreted it. We said in Martin v. State, 203 Md. 66, 75 , that a factory, which was a type of building not mentioned in the statutes there involved, was included within the meaning of the term storehouse which was named in the statutes, because goods manufactured in the building were kept there for some period after being made ready for sale. Both in Putnam v. State, 234 Md. 537, 543 , and McLaughlin, Jr. v. State, 234 Md. 555, 558 , Chief Judge Bruñe, for the Court, pointed out that Sec. 32 of Art. 27 dealt with breaking “a storehouse or other outhouse'” (emphasis supplied) and we held in Putnam that a drug store was an outhouse within the contemplation of Sec. 32 (and, inferentially, within the contemplation of Sec. 342), and in McLaughlin that proof that a bowling alley was broken into was sufficient to sustain a verdict of guilty on an indictment which charged the breaking of a storehouse. In Hardison v. State, 226 Md. 53, 58 , Judge Prescott, speaking for the Court, adopted a dictionary definition of storehouse as follows: “1.

A house or building in which things are stored. 2. Any repository or source of abundant supplies * * *,” and equated storeroom as used in Sec. 33 of Art. 27 with storehouse as used in Sec. 32. See also Jones v. Hungerford, 4 G. & J. 402, 406 , which held that a schoolhouse,