Snowden v. State

Burke, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. John Snowden, the appellant on this record, was indicted by the Grand Jury for Anne Arundel County for the murder of Lottie May Brandon, a young married woman living at No. 29 Second street, in the city of Annapolis. The murder was alleged to have been committed on the 8th of August, 1917. The indictment contained two counts.

The first, count alleged that the said John Snowden on the date and at the county aforesaid: “In and upon one Lottie May Brandon in the peace of God and of the said State then and there being, feloniously, wilfully and of his malice aforethought did make an assault, and that he the said John Snowden, then and there the said Lottie May Brandon, by and upon the neck and throat of her the said Lottie May Bran ⁶²⁶ don, with both the hands of him the said John Snow-den, did feloniously, wilfully and of his malice aforethought, grasp and seize, thereby choking and strangling the said Lottie May Brandon, and that he the said John Snowden, with a certain blunt instrument, a further description whereof is unknown to the jurors aforesaid, in his hand then and there had and held the said Lottie May Brandon, in and upon the head of her the said Lottie May Brandon, then and there feloniously, wilfully and of his malice aforethought, did strike, giving to her the said Lottie .May Brándon, then and there, with the blunt instrument aforesaid, a further description whereof is unknown to the jurors aforesaid, as aforesaid, by the stroke aforesaid, in and upon the head of her the said Lottie May Brandon, a mortal wound, of which said choking, strangling and mortal wound she the said Lottie May Brandon then and there died.” The second count alleged “that the said John Snowden on the eighth day of August, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and seventeen, at the county aforesaid, feloniously, wilfully and deliberately premeditated malice aforethought did kill and murder Lottie May Brandon, contrary to the form of' the Act of Assembly in such case made and provided against the peace, government and dignity of the State.” Snowden plead not guilty, and upon the suggestion of the State’s Attorney for Anne Arundel County, the case was removed to the Circuit Court for Baltimore County for trial. The case was tried in that Court in January, 1918, and on thé 31st day of January, 1918, the jury found Snowden guilty of murder in the first degree. A motion for a new trial was made and overruled, and on the 13th of February, 1918, the Court sentenced Snowden to be hanged. The appeal in this case was taken from that judgment. ⁶²⁷ The State has moved to dismiss the appeal upon two grounds,: First, because the record was not transmitted to this'Court within the time required by law; second, because the bills of exceptions were not signed during the term at which the judgment was entered, nor within any extension of the time for such signing which had been granted by the Court.

The judgment, as we have stated, was entered on the 13th of February, 1918, and the order for an appeal was filed March 2, 1918. The appeal was, therefore, taken within, the time required by Rule 23 of this Court. But the transcript of the record was not filed in this Court until October 5, 1918,—a little more than seven months after the order for appeal was filed. It was not transmitted earlier because the bills of exceptions were not signed until the 23rd of September, 1918.

But the record shows, that, the delay in the signing of the exceptions and in the transmitting of the record were not chargeable to the default or to the laches of the appellant or his counsel. A certificate of Junan Duncan, who presided at the trial, appears in the record by which it is shown that the bill of exceptions “in their present shape," were submitted to him by the counsel for the appellant before the 15th of April, 1918, * * * the time limited by previous orders of Court for filing exceptions being May 15, 1918. Judge Duncan told counsel that, the exceptions should be presented to the State’s Attorney for Anne Arundel County for approval, and they were presented to the State’s Attorney for that county on or before April 12, 1918. On the 27th of April, 1918, the exceptions were again presented to Judge Duncan “in their present shape” without an agreement between counsel as to what they should contain having been reached.

Judge Duncan took no action upon the exception, but banded them over to Mr. Hartman, the State’s Attorney for Baltimore County, with, the request that he go over the exceptions with Mr. Brady, one of the counsel for the appellant. Judge Duncan was absent from Towson by reason of illness from July 5th until September 16th, 1918, and he heard no more of the exceptions until the 12th of August, ⁶²⁸ 1918, when they were received by him in New York. Before acting upon them, Charles S. Williams, one of the counsel for the appellant, called upon him and requested the return of the exceptions in order to go over them with the -State’s Attorney for Anne Arundel County. The judge did not see the exceptions again until a,bout the 16th of September when they were returned to him by Mr. Williams for his action, no agreement having been reached.

The exceptions were signed by Judge Duncan on the 23rd of September, 1918, and the bills of exceptions then acted upon were the same ones which on two occasions in April, 1918, had been presented to him by counsel for the appellant. It thus appears that the appeal was taken in time, and that the exceptions were prepared by the counsel for the accused with reasonable promptness, and submitted to the judge on two occasions within the time limited by previous orders regularly passed. This was all that was required of counsel, and under the circumstances stated it can not be held that the delay in signing the exceptions or transmitting the record was due to any fault of the appellant or his counsel. We said in Wilmer v. Baltimore, 116 Md. 338 , that in cases at law it is the settled practice in this State in the event of a disagreement between counsel for the trial judge to determine what shall constitute the record.

The motion to- dismiss the appeal will therefore be denied. . During the progress of the trial sixty-six exceptions were taken by the appellant to rulings of the Court to questions of evidence. Eorty-six of these exceptions are not pressed in this Court, but we have considered them carefully and find no reversible error in any of them. The exceptions relied on are the third, fourth, fifthj twelfth, fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, twenty-first, twenty-third, thirty-first, thirty-third, thirty-fourth, thirty-seventh, forty-sixth, forty-seventh, forty-ninth, fiftieth, fifty-first, fifty-fourth and fifty-sixth.

Three of the exceptions, viz, the fifth, fiftieth and fifty-first were not signed by the presiding Judge, and therefore can not be considered by us. They can not be regarded as valid excep ⁶²⁹ tions. Poe on Pleading and Practice, 2 Vol., Sec. 321; Jones v. State, 118 Md. 67 . Before passing on the remaining seventeen exceptions, which are relied upon for the reversal of the judgment, we will give a brief outline of some of the important facts upon which the State relies to convict the appellant.

It must, however, he borne in mind that this Court has no power to pass upon the guilt or innocence of the appellant. Ho elected to be tried by a jury. They were the exclusive judges of the weight and sufficiency of the evidence to establish the guilt of the accused, and we have no- power to disturb their finding, unless we find that the Court during the course of the trial committed some reversible or injurious error either in the admission or rejection of testimony. The following facts were proved by the State without contradiction: first, that Mrs. Brandon ,on the morning of August 8th, 1917, after the departure of her husband to take up his work at the Experiment Station, Annapolis, where he was employed, was seen alive at her home.

One witness— Ida Burch—testified that on that morning she saw Mrs. Brandon come to the door of her home and pick up a paper and go into her house. She fixed the time she saw her as between half-past 10 and 11 o’clock. Another witness— Grace Myers—testified that she saw Mrs. Brandon on the day of her death about 10.30 or quarter óf 11 o’clock. That Mrs. Brandon came to the door and picked up a paper and spoke to the witness.

Another witness—Thomas A. King—testified that on the morning of the same day he saw Mrs. Brandon sitting in the kitchen window of her home. Secondly, that the apartment occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Brandon was the lower floor of 29 Second street, and consisted of three rooms and a bath, the middle room being the bedroom. About 5 o’clock on the afternoon of Wednesday, August 8th, 1917, Mr. Brandon returned from his work. He entered by the front door into the front room and called his wife.

He went into the middle or second room, and found Mrs. Brandon lying on the bed. He spoke to her and touched her shoulder, ⁶³⁰ and she did not answer. He thought she had fainted or was sick. He became alarmed and went to get a physician.

He notified a neighbor—Mrs. Burch—who lived nearby, and she went to the house, and found Mrs. Brandon dead. The fact of her death soon became known in the neighborhood, and a number of people gathered in and about the house. Dr. Joseph O. Joyce reached the house between 5 and 5.30 o’clock and found Mrs. Brandon dead. The body was lying on the left side, with the head to the foot of the bed; her hair was loose and wrapped around her neck, and her dress was pulled up about her knees and her limbs were exposed.

Her limbs were bruised and her neck was scratched and bruised. She had a wound in her forehead from which the blood had flowed, saturating the sheet and mattress. Dr. Joyce made an autopsy of the body on the night of August 8th, 1917, at the Emergency Hospital, Annapolis, assisted by Dr. Walton H. Hopkins. He described the condition of the body as to bruises disclosed at the autopsy, which he said were the same bruises he noticed when he first went to' the house and saw the body: “We found a bruise over the back of the left hand; we found a bruise between the first and second knuckle; found a bruise in the center of the forearm, anterior surface of the left arm; found a bruise on her right arm above the elbow, a corresponding one on the left elbow; found bruises, several bruises, over the neck, scratches on the side of the neck and a large bruise- Q.

(interrupting) What did these bruises on the neck, what did they resemble, the appearance of them ? A. The scratches resembled the appearance of nails. Q. Fingernails ? A. Fingernails.

Found a large depression in the center- of the forehead, the skin broken. You want me to tell what we found when we went in? Q. One miunte; were those the same bruises you noticed, Doctor, when you first went to- the house and looked at the body? A. Yes; also two large bruises over the knee, right and left legs.” He said the marks upon the neck which looked like scratches from fingernails were “curved back,” and would have to be done by someone stand ⁶³¹ ing behind and not in front of Mrs. Brandon.

He testified that Mrs. Brandon’s death was a result of the blow on the forehead, strangulation and shock. Dr. Hopkins, who saw the body of Mrs. Brandon at her home before the autopsy, testified that she died from shock as a result of her injuries. Several witnesses corroborated the evidence of Dr. Joyce as to the injuries to Mrs. Brandon, and there is really no contradiction of this evidence, and no real question that she died as the result of her