Jeter v. State

Digges, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellant, Clarence Arthur Jeter, was jointly indicted with James Robinson, Elviston Garrett and Wiley Lee Cantor by the Grand Jury for Baltimore City under two separate indictments, one charging storehouse breaking and the other premeditated murder. At his own request Jeter received a severance and was tried separately in a nonjury trial before Judge Solomon Liss. The pertinent segment of the trial court’s findings of fact is as follows: “In the early morning hours of January 25, 1968, four men arrived at a warehouse building located at 401 Homeland Avenue in the City of Baltimore, owned by L. Greif and Brothers, Inc., a Maryland Corporation, for the purpose of breaking into the warehouse.

Three of the men entered the premises by breaking a window in the shipping department and crawling inside. The Defendant, Clarence Jeter, never actually entered the premises, although two of the witnesses testified to having seen him attempt to enter and then withdraw hurriedly when he saw them coming. One of them, James Paul, positively identifies Jeter as the man who tried to enter the premises. Shortly after the three men gained entrance, Thompson, the night watchman, heard suspicious noises; and he ran to the office where Paul and two other employees, Wilkerson and Warren, were working and enlisted their aid.

The four men ran to the shipping area, where Wilkerson testified: “ T noticed a man down on the floor on his ²²³ hands and knees, and as I looked at him, he was then fifteen feet away, and he pointed a revolver at me. With this, I ducked behind some boxes and yelled that he had a gun. By that time, the night watchman yelled, “Drop that thing,” and he was actually — he grabbed hold of the man with the gun. With him grabbing ahold of it, they moved out of my line of vision.

I noticed the other man pull away from the night watchman, when about five, ten feet, turned around and I heard a shot. The next thing I saw was the night watchr man come out clutching his chest and sort of moaning, wail-type sound he was malting.’ The man who fired the shot was Jimmie Robinson, a co-defendant with Jeter. Thompson was struck by the bullet and died as a result of the gun shot wound.” The trial judge found Jeter guilty of storehouse breaking, but no appeal was taken from that judgment. Judge Liss also found that Jeter, as a principal in the second degree, was guilty of murder in the first degree.

From this conviction and an accompanying sentence of life imprisonment, he appealed to the Court of Special Appeals, which affirmed the judgment. Jeter v. State, 9 Md. App. 575 , 267 A. 2d 319 (1970). While that appeal was pending, Jeter’s co-defendant, Robinson, the alleged trigger-man and principal