Matthews v. State

PpR Curiam. The appellant, Sarah Matthews, was convicted of two counts of shoplifting and one count of larceny by a jury in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County. She was sentenced to terms of three years on the shoplifting counts and a term of five years on the larceny count, the sentences to run concurrently. On this appeal, appellant contends that her arrest was illegal, and that the evidence seized incident thereto was improperly admitted at her trial.

The evidence adduced at the trial tended to establish that on December 18, 1965, at approximately 5 :00 p.m., twenty dresses of the aggregate retail value of $277.71 were removed without payment from Deb’s Den, Inc., a clothing store in Silver Spring, Maryland. Miss Bonnie Berg, an employee of the store, testified that she observed the appellant in the store with a companion, but that she did not see the appellant leave the store. Miss Berg did not see the appellant remove the dresses from the store’s rack; she did, however, notice their absence shortly after the appellant arrived at the store, and as a result she ran ⁵⁵⁷ out of the store where she observed an automobile containing three persons pulling away. Officer John E. Anderson of the Montgomery County Police arrived on the scene shortly thereafter, and as a result of his conversation with Miss Berg he placed a lookout over his police radio for a “Nash Rambler, bearing D.C. registration 8 ER 46, either blue or green or greenish-blue,” to investigate larceny shoplifting.

Corporal Scot M. Wittworth, an officer of the Maryland National Park and Planning Commission, received this call over his car radio and shortly thereafter stopped the vehicle in question on a public street, where he observed the appellant sitting on the right side of the vehicle’s front seat. Shining his flashlight on the front seat of the vehicle, Corporal Wittworth observed a large quantity of clothing on hangers. He then checked the driver’s identification. Detective Robert E. Peay of the Montgomery County Police was also on duty at about 5 :00 p.m. on the evening of December 18, 1965 when he heard the lookout for the green Rambler.

He asked the police radio dispatcher to ascertain from the officers on the scene whether the clothing taken would amount to over $100.00 in value so as to constitute a felony. The record does not disclose whether Detective Peay ever received this information. He did, however, observe the vehicle in question where it had been stopped by Corporal Wittworth. The detective testified that as he approached the car, he saw the appellant sitting on the front seat in the middle, and, upon looking inside the car, observed “a bunch of dresses” with hangers on them laying on the floor between the appellant’s feet.

He then advised the occupants of the automobile that they were suspects in a larceny shoplifting. Miss Berg subsequently arrived at the scene of the arrest and identified the appellant as the woman she had seen in the Deb’s Den store prior to the disappearance of the dresses. The