Miller v. State

¹⁶⁰ Hammond, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Miller, the appellant, was convicted by the Criminal Court of Baltimore, sitting without a jury, of robbery with a dangerous weapon. In his appeal to this Court, he challenges the sufficiency of the evidence and the admission of a confession he had given the police. Miller said in his confession that he and Ruth Nance had been drinking wine and that she put a monkey wrench in her pocket and the two of them went into Glazer’s grocery store and ordered a quarter pound of bologna, for which he paid.

Ruth then pointed the monkey wrench in her pocket at Glazer, and both reached into the cash register and took money out. Glazer testified that Miller bought and paid for the bologna, that Ruth then walked up and “pulled out a gun and said T mean business’ ” and that Miller then hit him in the face with his bare hand before they robbed the register. On cross-examination, Glazer said he was sure that what Ruth threatened him with was a gun, adding: “I saw a gun,” and that she had the gun in her hand, as well as that “It wasn’t a wrench, it was a gun.” A fourteen-year-old boy, who came in the store during the robbery and ran out to call the police, identified Miller and Ruth as those who were robbing Glazer when he came in. When the robbers left the store, they ran down an alley and went through a house to the street on which it fronted.

The householder and an occupant of the house next door identified Miller and Ruth as those who went through the house. The fourteen-year-old boy had run to that street, and he pointed out Miller and Ruth to the police as the robbers. After they had arrested Miller, the police searched him and took a piece of bologna from his pocket. The next day Miller gave the confession which was exculpatory as to the use of a gun, and in which he claimed that his companion Ruth had used the monkey wrench to imitate a gun.

The corpus delicti was proved by the testimony of the store owner, Glazer, and the fourteen-year-old boy, and these two witnesses identified Miller as one of the robbers. There was corroboration of this by other witnesses. The trial judge found as a fact that the robbery had been effected at the point of a ¹⁶¹ gun, and Glazer’s explicit testimony a number of times to this effect permitted this finding. Dyson v. State, 226 Md. 18, 21 .

The finding justified the conclusion of the judge that the robbery had been with a dangerous weapon, without further testimony as to the kind of gun or as to whether it was loaded. Hayes v. State, 211 Md. 111 ; Vincent v. State, 220 Md. 232, 237, 238 . There was a full sufficiency of evidence to support the conviction. Miller contends that his confession, which was admitted against him, was obtained by physical force and duress, after an unnecessary period of delay and after he had been denied the right to call counsel.

The police officers who obtained the confession testified that because Miller had been drinking prior to his arrest he was not interrogated at any length until the following day, and that when he was, the confession was given and signed freely and voluntarily after he had been advised of the nature of the charges and of his rights and the possible use of the confession against him in court. They said further that there had been no threat, physical force or duress and no promise or inducement. They also say that Miller was not denied the right to call counsel. Miller did not take the stand, and there was no other refutation of the testimony of the police officers as to the voluntariness of the confession.

Miller has shown no prejudice in the delay in questioning him until the day following his arrest, and there is nothing in the record, in the words of Jones v. State, 229 Md. 165, 171 , “to indicate or even suggest that the will of the defendant, (who, though lacking book learning, was nevertheless schooled in the things and ways of the criminal world), had been so overpowered that he was unable to resist making the inculpatory statement he gave the police.” If it be assumed that Miller had sought and been denied counsel, that circumstance alone without the showing that the confession was not his free and voluntary act, would not make it inadmissible. Presley v. State, 224 Md. 550, 559 , cert. den. 368 U. S. 957 , 7 L. Ed. 2d 389 ; Driver v. State, 201 Md. 25, 30 ; Day v. State, 196 Md. 384, 397 ; Jones v. State, supra. After the case was