Lee and Freeman v. State

Hammond, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellants claim that their convictions of armed robbery must be reversed because the State did not prove the allegations of the indictment, that they “* * * feloniously did rob Richard Ladbrook and violently did steal from him Twenty-Three Dollars * * by showing that Ladbrook was either the owner or the otherwise lawful possessor of the money taken. They claim that this resulted in a fatal variance, although their arguments seem to go to the insufficiency of the evidence to show ownership or right to possession of the stolen dollars. In any event, the point was not raised in any specific fashion below, not one word of cross-examination or in support of motions for judgment of acquittal made at the end of the State’s case and at the end of the whole case having been addressed to it, and ordinarily it would not be properly before us for review, Md. Rule 885.

Assuming without deciding that in this non-jury case the motions for judgment of acquittal preserved for appellate determination whether all the elements of the crime charged in the indictment were proven, Md. Rule 886 a, we find no merit in the claim. The only testimony going to the matter of the ownership or lawful possession of the twenty-three dollars was that the robbers pointed a pistol at Ladbrook, who was the sole attendant on duty at a filling station of Spur Oil Company, and told him ²²⁶ to “give me your money.” Ladbrook testified that in response: “* * * I turned around, handed them the money. They wasn’t satisfied with that, they wanted more. I told them I didn’t have no more.

They said ‘Come on, give us the rest of the money.’ So, I reached in my pocket, pulled out the nickels and quarters, threw them on the table, told them ‘here.’ That’s all they got,” (referring to the sum of twenty-three dollars.) This testimony could have permitted the trier of fact to infer that Ladbrook was the owner of the money taken from him, Sippio v. State, 227 Md. 449 , and the literal allegation of the indictment would in such case have been fully proven. If, on the other hand, the trier of fact drew the inference that the money taken from Ladbrook belonged to his employer, the Spur Oil Company, the indictment’s allegations of ownership would likewise have been gratified in the eyes of the law. We have held in a larceny case that the allegation