Royster v. State

Pír Curiam. The Appellant, Milton Royster, was convicted of being a common thief under Md. Code, Art. 27, Sec. 558, by Judge Thomas J. Kenney, sitting without a jury in the Criminal Court of Baltimore and sentenced to three years under the jurisdiction of the Department of Correction. In this appeal, the sole question is whether the evidence was legally sufficient to sustain the conviction. The record indicates that on the evening of April 17, 1967, a plain-clothes officer of the Baltimore City Police Department observed the Appellant closely following a woman who was carrying a pocketbook on her arm.

Although the Appellant appeared to have his hands in the pockets of his trench coat, the officer observed a hand “come out between the coat,” come to rest upon the woman’s pocketbook and attempt to open it. The officer then observed the Appellant and the woman as they ⁵⁶¹ boarded a bus where the Appellant again unsuccessfully attempted to open the woman’s pocketbook. As the woman deposited her fare into the box, the Appellant left the bus and was immediately arrested by the officer. The Appellant testified in his own behalf, and denied attempting to open the woman’s pocketbook.

He admitted, on direct examination, that in October 1966 he had been convicted of the larceny of a wallet and that in 1965 he had been convicted of shoplifting and in 1964 had been convicted of assault with intent to rob. Article 27, Section 558, the statute under which the Appellant was convicted provides, in part: “It shall be the duty of all police officers and detectives in Baltimore City to arrest * * * all persons whom they shall find in Baltimore City or upon any train, boat, car or other vehicle commonly used for the transportation of passengers * * * who they shall know or have good reason to believe are common thieves or pickpockets, * * * and it shall be necessary to charge in the indictment only that the person is a common thief or common pickpocket, and any evidence, either of facts or reputation, proving that such person is habitually and by practice a thief or pickpocket, shall be sufficient for his conviction if satisfactorily establishing the fact to the court or jury by whom he is tried, So far as we have been able to ascertain, the Act has been before the Court of Appeals of Maryland for construction in only two cases. The most recent was State v. Cherry, 224 Md. 144 . There the lower court had dismissed an indictment brought under the Act on the ground that the statute was so vague and indefinite as to violate Article 23 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution.

The State appealed and the lower court’s action was reversed. Judge Prescott, (later Chief Judge) in speaking for the Court, found “that the word ‘common’ had at the time of the enactment of Section 558, and still has, a technical and well-established meaning in law, which, ⁵⁶² with the remainder of the statute, fixes an ascertainable standard of guilt, rendering the act sufficiently definite, so that a person of