Robinson v. State

¹³⁸ Urner, J., delivered the opinion of the court. The appellant has been convicted of murder in the first degree and is under sentence- of death. The homicide charged against him was committed in Anne Arundel County. After his indictment in that jurisdiction the case was removed to-the Criminal Court of Baltimore City, where it was tried before Judges Heuisler, Dobler, and Dawkins, a jury trial being waived.

The victim of the murder was James Elder Tydings, and the scene- of the crime was in the woods near Town Heck Church on the State Road from Annapolis to Baltimore. Mr. Tydings was on hisi way home Horn work on a S'-aturday afternoon when he was killed and robbed. The weapon used was a large stone with which his skull was crushed and which was found near his body. Within a few hours after the murder was committed the appellant left his home in the neighborhood and went to- Virginia.

He was arrested there about two weeks later. After being brought hack to this State he was questioned as to his movements on the day of the murder. His first statement was to- the effect that he stopped work at Round Bay on that day at twelve o’clock and returned to his home, where he- ate-his dinner and remained there, mending shoes and getting ready to leave, until about three o’clock, when he went to Boone Station and boarded a train for Baltimore, where he took a train at four-forty-five for Washington, and went on to Virginia the same evening on a visit to his former home at Forrest Depot in that State. In the course of another interview, which occurred on the-day following the one just referred to-, the appellant, stated that after returning home from work and eating his dinner, on the afternoon of the murder, he went down to- the store to-buy a pair of socks, and while he was there a truck came along the ro-ad on its way to Baltimore, and he- jumped upon the truck and rode along with the driver awhile, inquiring" whether there was any work he could get in Annapolis, and while thus talking he rode further than he intended; that he-got off the truck after passing Town Heck Church and walked' ¹³⁹ back along tbe road and went into tbe woods, where he saw Mr. Tydings in the aet of driving away some colored boys who were playing “craps”; that he saw Mr. Tydings. hit one of the boys, and saw one of them wrestling with him; and that he (the appellant) then left the woods and went home.

When asked whether he would point out the place where he saw Mr. Tydings and the boys, he consented to do so, and went with two officers in an automobile to within a short distance of the woods in which the murder was committed, and there conducted them on foot to the spot where the body of Mr. Tydings was reported to have been found. Later1 on the same day the appellant was confronted with the three boys he had mentioned as having been in the woods with Mr. Tydings, and persisted in that assertion in spite of their denials. In an interview two days afterwards with Mr. Green, the State’s Attorney for Anne Arundel County, the appellant stated that when he went into the woods, on the afternoon in question, he saw Mr. Tydings, who .cursed him and struck him with a stick and he returned the blow, also using a stick; that with a second blow be knocked Mr. Tydings down, and then went through his pockets and got twelve dollars in paper money, and looked through the basket of provisions he had been carrying and took out some pork chops, and then went home where his wife cooked the chops, and after they were eaten he changed his clothes and left for Virginia by way of Baltimore and Washington as already narrated. IJpon being questioned further by Mr. Green, the appellant said that he struck Mr. Tydings with a stone, and not with a stick, but did not intend to kill him and did not know