Nicholson v. State

Hammond, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. In an effort to set aside his conviction of arson the appellant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence, claiming that the corpus delicti was not established and that identification of him as the probable arsonist was unreliable to the point of being illusory. We find the record ample to support the persuasion of the trial court, sitting without a jury, that the appellant was guilty as charged of arson. An empty dwelling in Baltimore in process of renovation, the entrances to which had been nailed shut, was discovered in flames.

A member of the City Fire Department for nineteen years with more than seven years’ experience in the Investigation Bureau (he had investigated four or five hundred fires a year to determine if they had been accidental or set) testified that the fire here involved necessarily was of incendiary origin because the gas and electricity in the house had been shut off, a door had been forced, a five-gallon can designed to transport gasoline, in which there had been a petroleum liquid, had been found on the premises, and the char and depth of the fire in certain areas of the second floor, where the fire started, indicated that flammable liquid had been poured on the floor to help ³⁹³ start the fire and maintain its intensity. There can hardly be serious doubt that the trier of fact could readily find that the corpus delicti was proven satisfactorily. McDowell v. State, 231 Md. 205, 207 . Cf.

Bollinger v. State, 208 Md. 298 . A resident of a nearby house, who was visiting his mother-in-law who lived in a house separated from the burned premises by one building lot — thirty-five to forty feet — happened to look through a window and see the appellant leaving the house which burned (about forty-five minutes later), carrying a can of the exact type found by the fire investigator on his second trip to