Jeandell v. State

Moylan, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellant, Philip Asay Jeandell, was convicted in the Circuit Court for Kent County by a jury, presided over by Judge George B. Rasin, of breaking and entering a storehouse and related offenses. Upon this appeal, he raises the single contention that the evidence was not legally sufficient to permit the case to go to the jury. That sufficiency question, in turn, revolves around whether two State’s witnesses, Albert Williams and Michael Bell, were accomplices and whether, if that be so, their testimony was corroborated.

In terms of corpus delicti, it was established that the Eastern Shore Auto Supply Store in Chestertown was broken into at some time. over the weekend of Saturday-Sunday-Monday, October 4, 5 and 6, 1975. Merchandise was stolen therefrom. Ultimately the police picked up both Williams and Bell and interrogated them. They admitted their complicity in the breaking and the larceny and implicated the appellant as well.

Their status as accomplices is without doubt. As to the quality and nature of non-accomplice testimony sufficient to corroborate the testimony of accomplices, the law was well stated in Foxwell v. State, 13 Md. App. 37 , at 39: “Although only slight corroboration is necessary, the corroborative testimony must tend either: (1) to identify the defendant with the perpetrators of the crime, or; (2) to show the defendant’s participation in the crime itself. Spies v. State, 8 Md. App. 160, 162 , 258 A. 2d 758 .” See also Early v. State, 13 Md. App. 182, 186 . In terms of arguable corroboration, there was no testimony tending to show the appellant’s participation in the crime itself.

At ¹¹⁰ most, the corroborating testimony tried “to identify the defendant with the perpetrators of the crime.” The only arguable corroboration came from Patricia Williams, the mother of one of the accomplices, and Cheryl Williams, the sister of that accomplice. Patricia Williams testified that she saw the appellant in the company of Williams and Bell at about 10:30 p.m. on Sunday evening, October 5, sitting on a porch of a house near her own residence on Cannon Street. Cheryl Williams testified that on that same evening of Sunday, October 5, she observed the appellant with Williams and Bell coming up Mill Street near Cannon Street. This was the sum total of the corroborative testimony.

The two accomplices, to be sure, had testified that they together with the appellant perpetrated the burglary and larceny over a period of several hours from roughly 9:30 p.m. to roughly 11:30 p.m. on that Sunday night of October 5 and that in the course of the breaking, they had to make several trips to the vicinity of Cannon Street, their home base, in order to get equipment. It would be sufficient by way of corroboration for the State to show, by non-accomplice evidence, that the appellant was in the company of the perpetrators of the crime in the general vicinity of the crime scene and at about the time when the crime occurred. In Wise v. State, 8 Md. App. 61 , we deemed corroboration sufficient when the non-accomplice testimony placed the defendant there in the company of the perpetrators at the scene of the crime and one hour before the crime occurred. In Kitt v. State, 2 Md. App. 306 , the corroboration was sufficient which placed the defendant with the accomplice minutes after the robbery-murder in that case (but also in inculpatory possession of a gun).

In Ham v. State, 7 Md. App. 474 , the corroboration was held to be sufficient which placed the defendant together with the accomplice several hours after the robbery, but at the crime scene and in the vehicle used in the robbery. In Holt v. State, 3 Md. App. 544 , the corroborating testimony was sufficient when the accomplice’s wife placed the accomplice and the defendant in ¹¹¹ that case together “immediately before and immediately after the hour of the robbery.” The difference between the appellant and the State in this case is not on the state of the law. Both agree that non-accomplice testimony identifying the appellant with the accomplices at approximately the time when the crime occurred would be sufficient corroboration. The difference between the appellant and the State in this case is not over the facts either.

Both agree that two non-accomplices placed the appellant with the accomplices on Sunday evening, October 5 — Patricia Williams putting them together