Lawrence v. State

Thompson, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Charlie Lawrence, the appellant, was convicted in the Circuit Court for Worcester County, Judge Daniel T. Prettyman presiding without a jury, under two indictments which charged him with assault with intent to murder Norman Short and Frederick Jarman respectively. Lawrence was sentenced to two fifteen (15) year concurrent sentences. On November 5, 1966, Charlie Lawrence, visited a tavern in the vicinity of Berlin, Maryland.

He had a beer but testified he was not drunk. For some reason he carried a loaded pistol with ⁷³⁸ him to the tavern even though he admitted he had no particular need for a pistol. An argument started in the tavern but Lawrence was not involved in this altercation. The owner of the tavern, Mr. James Ayers, was in an argument with someone else.

A witness, Sylvester Briddell, testified that he was in the tavern with Norman Short and Frederick Jarman, the victims, and two ladies, one of whom was Jarman’s wife. Jarman was shot first and Short asked Lawrence “why did you shoot my friend?” Whereupon Lawrence shot Short. Biriddell testified these events took place at the front entrance of the tavern and that Norman Short had made no attempt to assault Lawrence, and had nothing in his hand. Briddell then asked Lawrence why he had shot Briddell’s friend; whereupon Lawrence pointed the pistol at him, but Briddell ran, hiding behind a gas tank.

Other witnesses supported Briddell’s version of the incident. Dr. Richard Hughes testified that Short and Jarman were both admitted to the accident room of the Peninsula General Hospital. Jarman, a soldier on leave from Vietnam, had a .22 Cal. gunshot wound in his chest and Short had a gunshot wound of the genital organ and right thigh. Lawrence claimed that when the argument started, the victims were at the door blocking his way and that one of them approached him with a knife and he shot him.

Lawrence contends there was not a sufficient showing of his specific intent to murder. The fallacy of this argument is that it presumes that a specific intent to murder is necessary for a conviction. Such is not the law. It is sufficient if there was an intention to commit grievous bodily harm.

We cannot say that the trial judge was clearly in error under Maryland Rule 1086 when he found that these bullet wounds were sufficient to show the intent required by the statute, Maryland Code, Art. 27, § 12 (1967 Repl. Vol.). The law in Maryland was carefully reviewed by the Court of Appeals in the case of Tate v. State (1964), 236 Md. 312 , 203 A. 2d 882 at page 884: “Finally, the appellant contends that the verdict of the trial judge was against the “weight of the evidence” (Cf. Maryland Rule 886 a) in