Lester v. State

Morton, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellant, Alexander Arthur Lester, was convicted of kidnapping and rape in a non-jury trial in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County. Consecutive sentences of 20 years and 21 years, respectively, were imposed. The victim, a 22-year old married woman, testified that upon her arrival at the parking lot of the hospital in which she was employed as a psychiatric aide, she was approached by a man whom she identified in court to be the appellant.

According to her testimony, the appellant “put one arm around my neck, and what I thought was a knife to my throat and told me to just go, to get in his car, and not to try anything, and I wouldn’t get hurt.” The appellant drove the witness some distance to a “small circular clearing” in a wooded area where he had “sexual intercourse” with her under circumstances where she “was scared to death.” Appellant then drove the witness back to the entrance to the hospital whereupon she got out of the car and jumped into a police car which had pulled up behind appellant’s. Appellant speeded off and eluded the pursuing police car in heavy traffic. These events took place during a period of approximately one and one-half hours. In this factual posture, appellant contends that the kidnapping was “merely a subsidiary incident to the rape and accordingly not a true ’Kidnapping’ as contemplated by Article 27, Section 337 of the Annotated Code of Maryland.” Although appellant concedes that the facts supporting his conviction are “technically within the purview” of the statute, he argues that “the restraint and asportation involved in this occurrence were merely incidental to and, in actuality, an integral part of the rape, ⁵⁴⁴ and factual circumstances as these were not intended by the- Legislature, in framing this broad definition of kidnapping, to constitute a'separate crime.” .

The statute under which appellant was convicted (Md. Code, Art. 27, § 337) provides: - “Every person, his counsellors, aiders or abettors, who shall be convicted of the crime of kidnapping and forcibly , or-fraudulently carrying or causing to be carried out of or within this State any person, except in the case of a minor, by a parent thereof, with intent to have such person carried out of or within this State, or with the intent to have such person concealed within the State or. without the State, shall be' guilty of a felony and shall be sentenced to death or to the penitentiary for not more than thirty years, in the discretion of the court.” Under the common law, kidnapping is defined ás the forcible abduction or carrying away of a man, woman or child from their own country into another country. Clark and Marshall, Law of Crimes, (6th ed.) 662; 4 Blackstone, Commentaries 219. Although asportation of the individual into another country is an essential ingredient of the common law crime of kidnapping, this requirement, as can be seen from the above statute, has been modified in Maryland, as is true in most states, and the crime attaches both to intrastate and interstate asportations. As indicated by the Court of Appeals of Maryland in Midgett v. State, 216 Md. 26, 39 , this State, by •statute, “has