Jones v. State

Murphy, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellant, Rosemary King Jones, was found guilty generally by the court sitting without a jury on a three-count indictment charging sale, possession and control of narcotics and of being a second offender under an addendum to the indictment. Sentenced to imprisonment for eight years under a general verdict, she contends on this appeal (a) that she was denied due process of law because of the unreasonable delay between the date of the alleged offense and the date of her arrest, and (b) that there was insufficient evidence presented by the State to justify the convictions. The record discloses that at noon on August 10, 1966, Frederick Bland, an undercover agent for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and an unnamed informant, were sitting in their car when a person,, later identified as the appellant, approached them and asked “what we were looking for.” The two men told appellant that they wanted bags of heroin and gave her $30.00 to make the purchase.

Within a short time thereafter, appellant returned to the car and gave the agent two bags of heroin. The ⁶¹⁸ day following this transaction, Agent Bland identified a mug shot of the appellant as being the person who sold him the two bags of heroin on August 10. A few days thereafter, the drugs were subjected to chemical analysis and proved to contain heroin hydrochloride. Agent Bland testified that he obtained a warrant for appellant’s arrest on December 14, 1966, some four months after the commission of the crime.

He testified that the delay in obtaining the warrant was attributable to the fact that the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the Baltimore City Police Department were making an intensive investigation and that to have made an earlier arrest “would have impaired the entire operation.” Appellant testified at the trial that she had no recollection of what she was doing, nor where she was, on August 10, 1966. She stated that although she was a drug addict, she did not see Agent Bland on August 10 and she testified further that it was not until December 31, 1966 that she was actually arrested. We find no merit in appellant’s contention that she was denied due process of law because of the unreasonable delay between the date of the offense (August 10) and the date of her arrest (December 31). After hearing the testimony, the lower court concluded that federal and city police “were in the process of working up a case and did not want to do anything to disturb the status of the informant.” It is, of course, clear that mere delay in procuring an arrest warrant, in and of itself, does not constitute prejudicial error.

In Brown v. State, 1 Md. App. 571 , the defendant violated the narcotics laws on August 26 and 27, 1965, and was not arrested until November 12, 1965. It was there alleged, as it is here, that the delay violated appellant’s constitutional rights. We observed in Brown that the evidence showed that the delay in procuring the defendant’s arrest on a warrant was occasioned by the existence of undercover work which would have been jeopardized had an earlier arrest been made. We hold here, as we did in Brown , that the delay in making the arrest was not unjustifiable under the circumstances.

In so concluding, we have considered Ross v. United States, 349 F. 2d 210 (App. D. C.), upon which appellant relies, but find it inapposite under the facts of the present case. ⁶¹⁹ Appellant suggests that the trial judge unduly restricted her cross-examination of Agent Bland as to the nature, scope and extent of his police activities and points to the fact that the court sustained an objection on relevancy grounds to her inquiry of him as to “how many cases have you and the informer made that have led to arrests.” While we agree with appellant that she should have been given the broadest latitude in cross-examining the agent in order to test his powers of perception and recollection, it is evident from the record that her efforts at cross-examination were not directed to this end, but rather were intended to elicit the reasons underlying the delay in making the arrest. The trial judge undoubtedly felt that the inquiry as posed, was over-broad and, as such, irrelevant; and appellant made no effort to narrow the range of the question and pinpoint the area of appropriate interrogation. Under these circumstances, we see no prejudicial error in the court’s ruling. That the evidence was sufficient to sustain the convictions is entirely clear.

The testimony of Agent Bland and the admission by stipulation of the chemist’s analysis was sufficient, if believed —as it obviously was—to support the convictions. See Brown v. State, supra, at page 576. We do not believe, however, that appellant could properly be sentenced as a second offender under Section 300 of Article 27 of the Maryland Code (1967 Repl. Vol.).

It was stipulated at the trial that the prior offense upon which the addendum was based was a 1960 conviction for possession of narcotics paraphernalia (a hypodermic syringe, etc.) under Section 297 of Article 27 of the Maryland Code. Section 300 (a), which authorizes imposition of a greater punishment for a second offender, provides,