Ouzts v. State

Per Curiam. On June 5, 1959, at approximately 2:20 A.M., Mrs. Bev ⁵⁴¹ erly Pistorio was assaulted while passing an areaway at the southwest corner of Monument Street and Einwood Avenue in Baltimore City. The appellant, Eddie Ouzts, was found guilty of the assault by a jury in the Criminal Court of Baltimore. Thereafter he was granted a new trial.

He was subsequently tried before Judge Prendergast, sitting without a jury, and was again convicted; and on this occasion he was sentenced to four years in the Maryland Penitentiary. He appeals, contending that the trial court erred in finding him guilty because its finding was based in part upon a misapprehension of one of the physical facts in the case. His contention is essentially that, but for the trial court’s erroneous belief that a cap, which was admittedly the defendant’s, had been found at the place where a suspect fleeing from the scene of the assault was last seen by pursuing witnesses, the judge, as the trier of the facts, would not or, at least, might well not have deemed the identification of the appellant sufficient to warrant his conviction. Actually the place where the cap was found was about four or five blocks from the point where the pursuers lost sight of the suspect, but it was on a direct route from that point (Eager Street and Kenwood Avenue) to the appellant’s home at 913 N. Chapel Street, which is less than one block south of the intersection of Eager and Chapel Streets.

He was arrested at his home a little later that night (or early morning). The error as to the identity of locations seems trivial in the light of this fact and of the other evidence in the case. This included : identification of the defendant by the victim, testimony of the pursuing witnesses, who had been in a car less than a block away, that they heard the screams of the victim, and then drove to the scene of the attack and saw a man fitting the description of the appellant as to physical appearance and clothing come out of the areaway, hesitate, put something under his arm and then run, that they pursued him for about two and a half blocks (to Kenwood Avenue and Eager Street) and then lost sight of him; evidence that the