Robinson v. State

Collins, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellant was convicted on seven counts of an indictment for violations of the gaming and lottery laws of this State. From the judgment he appeals to this Court. He claims that the trial judge committed error in admitting, over objections, articles used for lottery and gambling.

There was testimony in the case that on July 24, 1951, about 1:45 P.M., Sergeant Roche and Officers Baker and Hagen, wearing plain clothes, were proceeding in an ¹³⁰ automobile along Warner Street in Baltimore near its intersection with Montgomery Street. At the same time the appellant, Eugene Robinson, accompanied by Ernest Reddit, was in a parked automobile at Montgomery and Warner Streets. Sergeant Roche, when about twenty-five or thirty feet from this parked car, saw a man walk toward the parked car with yellow lottery slips in his hand and pass them in the window of the automobile to the appellant who was sitting in the driver’s seat. Sergeant Roche admitted that at that distance he could not read anything on the slips but from his past experience he knew they were lottery slips.

The officers pulled in front of this parked automobile to block it off. Appellant tried to “run them down”. The Sergeant got out of the police car, walked over to the parked automobile and said: “Stop, Police”. He showed appellant his badge and placed him under arrest.

He then saw in appellant’s left hip pocket, next to the window, yellow lottery slips and a yellow bag. He said to appellant: “Give me them slips you got in your pocket.” Appellant became very confused and handed the lottery tickets and the bag with the money to the Sergeant. Officer Baker, who had immediately run up to the side of the car on which Reddit was seated, said to Reddit: “Give me that bag of lottery slips at your feet.” Reddit immediately reached down, picked up the bag and handed it out of the window to Officer Baker, who opened it in appellant’s presence and said: “This is full of lottery numbers”. The two officers took appellant and Reddit to the police station and there the turnkey took from appellant’s pocket a book with lottery notations on it.

Appellant in his direct examination was asked: Q; “I show you these slips. Did you ever have these in your possession?” He answered: “No, if they were anywhere they must have been in that bag; they weren’t in my possession.” Appellant, in his brief, admits that “appellant not only was passive and silent but actually denied ownership”. Appellant contends, however, that the lottery slips, money bag, the bag on the floor of the ¹³¹ car and the contents therein, and the book with the lottery notations on it were not admissible in evidence. In Blager v. State, 162 Md. 664 , 161 A. 1, 2 , the appellant, suspected of illegal lottery operations, was accosted by a police officer in plain clothes who, seeing a package in appellant’s pocket, said to him: “I am Sergeant Smith and I want those lottery tickets that you have on you.” The appellant said: “There they are in my coat pocket.

Take them.” The appellant contended that these slips were not admissible in evidence by reason of the Bouse Act, now Code 1939, as amended, Code Supp. 1947, Article 35, Section 5, relied on by the appellant here. In affirming the conviction, this Court said in that case: “No coercion was employed in this case to induce the appellant’s admission of his unlawful possession of lottery slips or his delivery of them to the officer. If he had been merely passive and silent, when confronted with the sergeant’s implied accusation, he would have been immune from any police interference until a warrant had been