Halcomb v. State

Murphy, C.J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Appellant was found guilty by a jury in the Criminal Court of Baltimore under two separate indictments charging (1) rob ³⁵ bing Officer James Custis of his police revolver and espantoon on May 2, 1964, and (2) assault with intent to murder Officer Custis on the same day. He was sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment on the count charging assault with intent to murder and ten years, consecutive, on the robbery charge. He contends on this appeal that the trial judge committed a number of prejudicial errors at the trial, principally in his failure to properly instruct the jury and in his rulings on the admissibility of evidence.

There was evidence adduced at the trial from which the jury could find that on May 2, 1964 at approximately 4:15 a.m., Officer James Custis, while walking his beat, observed three men emerge from an alley. Suspicious of their actions, Custis confronted the three men, one of whom was the appellant, the others being Burl Bradburn and John Gipe. The officer observed during the confrontation that the men had a metal stand with them. As there had been a number of burglaries in the neighborhood, Custis thought that the stand may have been a television or table stand that had been taken in a burglary.

The officer asked the men to identify themselves, but they refused, although Gipe did tell the officer that he lived in the neighborhood and that the stand belonged to him. At this point, the men started to break away from Custis and he grabbed appellant and Gipe with the intention of placing them under'arrest. He was then struck from behind, knocked to the ground, beaten and kicked repeatedly by the three men, and struck with his own espantoon. While on the ground, the officer tried to get his gun from its holster.

He heard one of the men say “He’s going for his gun,” to which one of the other men said “That’s all right, I got it.” The officer was then shot in the face with his own revolver. He was unable to identify which of the three men shot him, but an eyewitness to the crime, the wife of Burl Bradburn (who observed the encounter from the window of her home) testified that it was appellant who shot Custis. Custis was removed to the hospital where, on the following day, he identified appellant as one of his assailants from among a number of photographs shown to him by the police. A six-man lineup was conducted at the hospital and Custis identified appellant, Bradburn, and Gipe as his assailants. ³⁶ The evidence showed that Officer Custis’s espantoon was recovered shortly after the crime in a gutter about a block from the point of the encounter.

On information received from appellant’s mother, the police recovered Custis’s revolver from a sewer on May 4, 1964, the sewer being located in the general area of the crime. I While appellant did not testify, and offered no evidence on his own behalf, he filed thirty-four written requests with the court for jury instructions, a number of which related to the elements necessary to establish the crime of robbery. Appellant particularly requested an advisory instruction to the effect that to convict him of robbery, the jury must find from the evidence that at the time he took and carried away the officer’s revolver and nightstick, he had a specific intent to deprive him of these items permanently; that if the officer’s nightstick and gun were taken for a purpose other than to steal, or were taken solely to disarm the officer or to prevent him from striking or shooting the defendant and his companions, but without an intention to steal the equipment at the time it was taken, the jury should find the defendant not guilty of robbery; and that in determining whether the defendant had the requisite intent to steal, the jury could consider the evidence that the revolver and espantoon were discarded. The court declined to grant the substance of the requested instructions, limiting its advisory instructions to the jury on the robbery offense to the following: “* * * [T]he State charges that the defendant feloniously did rob or steal from Officer Custis his revolver and nightstick.

Now, the robbery is the taking of property from a person by means of actual or implied force. Therefore, in order to find the defendant guilty under this count, you must find three things. First, that force or violence was used by the defendant upon Officer Custis. Secondly, you must find that his revolver and nightstick were taken, and thirdly, you must find that at the time he had the intention to deprive Officer Custis of these items.

I might add at this time ³⁷ that this does not mean the State must prove an admission on the part of the defendant of an intent to rob. It can be proved by circumstances in the case. The use of a dangerous and deadly weapon, the severity of the beating, the violence used, all of these are circumstances from which intent can be inferred either by the Court or Jury.” The appellant specifically excepted to the lower court’s refusal to grant the gist of his requested instructions, as above outlined, and contends on this appeal that the failure of the court below so to instruct the jury constituted reversible error. We agree.

Robbery is larceny from the person accompanied by violence or putting in fear, Harrison v. State, 3 Md. App. 148 , and as every robbery embraces a larceny, Veney v. State, 227 Md. 608, 612, a larcenous intent is an essential ingredient of robbery, Midgett v. State, 216 Md. 26, 41 . As defined in Hadder v. State, 238 Md. 341, 354 , a case involving a charge of armed robbery, a larcenous intent means “that the robber must intend to steal the property taken, i.e., permanently to deprive the owner (or the lawful possessor) of his property,” the court there emphasizing at page 355 that “the crucial element of larcenous intent is an intent permanently to deprive the owner of his property.” To the same general effect, see Johnson v. State, 237 Md. 283 ; Fletcher v. State, 231 Md. 190 ; Putinski v. State, 223 Md. 1 ; Sizemore v. State, 5 Md. App. 507 ; Anderson v. State, 3 Md. App. 85 ; Gopshes v. State, 1 Md. App. 396 . It is thus clear that as all of the elements that are necessary to constitute the crime of larceny are also necessary to constitute robbery, the taking and carrying away must be with felonious intent, viz., with a fraudulent intent to deprive the owner permanently of his property at the time it was taken. See Clark and Marshall, Crimes, Sections 12.09, 12.10; Perkins on Criminal Law, page 224.

In Midgett , the appellant was charged with robbing a police officer of his service revolver, belt, holster and flashlight. The evidence showed that the officer was abducted by the defendant and his confederates at which time they took the police ³⁸ equipment in question from him; that the holster and belt were almost immediately thereafter discarded; and that the officer’s gun was hidden by the defendant in the woods, but later recovered and returned to the authorities. One of the questions before the court was whether there was evidence from which the trier of fact could rationally conclude that the defendant intended to steal the officer’s property at the time he took it. While noting that larcenous intent may be ascertained and determined from the words, acts, and conduct of the accused, and that such intent is peculiarly a jury issue, the court made it crystal clear at page 45 that upon such evidence as there existed a specific instruction should be given to the jury to the effect that “if it finds that the defendant, by taking and carrying away the equipment of the officer, intended to steal it, then the verdict should be ‘guilty,’ but if it finds that he merely intended to disarm the officer, without an intent to steal his equipment at the time it was taken and carried away, then the verdict should be ‘not guilty.’ ” It is, of course, incumbent upon the court when requested in a criminal case to give an advisory instruction on every essential point of law supported by the evidence.

Gordon v. State, 5 Md. App. 102 ; Malloy v. State, 4 Md. App. 420 ; Huber v. State, 2 Md. App. 245; Tipton v. State, 1 Md. App. 556 . Under the circumstances of this case, we think it evident that the lower court erred when it advised the jury in sum and substance that it could find the requisite intent to rob if it concluded that at the time the officer’s gun and nightstick were taken, the appellant “had the intention to deprive Officer Custis of these items.” Such an instruction on the key element of intent was not only too limited under the circumstances but it wholly failed to take into account the theory of appellant’s defense to the robbery charge, as reflected by his requests for instructions •—■ namely, that at the time the officer’s revolver and espantoon were taken, there was no intention to steal either of them in the sense of an intention to permanently deprive him of his property in these items, but on the contrary, the intent was to deprive him only temporarily of his custody or use of this property. In light of the circumstances under which the officer’s gun and nightstick were taken from him, as shown by the evidence, together ³⁹ with the nature of these items, and the fact that they were subsequently abandoned at or near the scene of the crime, we think there was a sufficient evidentiary basis upon which the jury could have concluded, had it been properly instructed, that there was not the requisite larcenous intent involved in the taking. That such an instruction as was requested by appellant was proper and should have been granted does not mean that there was no evidence in the case from which the jury could have properly concluded that a larcenous intent did in fact exist.

Cf. Bradburn and Gipe v. State, 4 Md. App. 248 . Nor would it mean that no larcenous intent could be found because the items taken were subsequently discarded or abandoned. See Johnson v. State, supra; Midgett v. State, supra; Sizemore v. State, supra.

It only means that there was evidence in the case from which the jury could find that at the time these items were taken from Officer Custis, the appellant did not have the requisite larcenous intent to permanently deprive the officer of his property. The function of a jury instruction being, among other things, to declare what rules of law will apply to any set of facts which may be found from the evidence (Wharton’s Criminal Lam and Procedure, Anderson Edition, Section 2090), we hold that as there was evidence to support the requested instruction, and as it was material to appellant’s defense and correctly stated the applicable law, it constituted reversible error under the circumstances of this case to omit the substance of it from the court’s charge to the jury. See Bennett v. State, 230 Md. 562 ; Bruce v. State, 218 Md. 87 . See also Maryland Rule 756 b.

II With reference to the charge of assault with intent to murder, appellant requested that the jury be instructed that the actions of Officer Custis in stopping and apprehending him constituted an arrest; that the arrest was illegal, unless the jury found that a