Sterling v. State

Horney, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. A jury of his peers found Elisha Sterling, Jr., guilty of rape and the trial court sentenced him to death. The evidence of guilt is clear and free from doubt. The crucial question is whether there was probable cause for arrest without a warrant.

Sometime after 11:20 p.m., in the night of June 13, 1966, Ida Jean Crockett was asleep in the front bedroom of her home ²⁴² when she was awakened by someone who “pinned” her to the bed, threatened to kill her with the knife he had in his hand if she moved or screamed, threw a quilt over her head and raped her. The victim lived on Johnson Creek near Crisfield in Somerset County with her husband and two of her children. Her husband, a waterman, was working at the time. The children (a girl of eleven and a boy of five) were asleep in an adjacent bedroom down the hallway out of which a light was shining through the house.

The intruder left the house by 12:15 a.m. on June 14, 1966. As soon thereafter as she could, the victim gathered her children into her bedroom and screamed for help. One of the several neighbors who responded, notified the police. At the trial, the victim testified that upon awakening she touched — “felt the blackest man” — she had ever seen, that she “heard this er-er-er-er-er (stammering)” and that when she saw his shadow she knew “by his voice” that “he was black.” That the victim had been raped was corroborated by Dr. C. G. Rawley, who, on examining her at her home and at the hospital, between 1:00 and 1:30 p.m. on June 14th, found a contusion of the labia majora and the presence of spermatozoa in the vagina.

Sergeant Robert D. Weir, of the Maryland State Police, arrived at the scene of the crime around 1:00 to 1:05 a.m., and was met by the victim, Trooper Whitby, the two neighbors who were the first to arrive and other neighbors. While the record does not positively indicate who gave him the requisite information as to what had happened, some one did for, as he testified, he began his investigation for such corroborative facts as were available by inspecting a “forced up” window in the dining-kitchen area through which the intruder gained entrance. Later, in daylight, he, and other police officers, traced the footprints leading to and from the window across a field to a county road and then here and there along the road to within a short distance of the home of the accused. Measurements of the distance between the coming and going footprints indicated that the intruder had walked in but run out.

It had rained during the night and one of the footprints made a deep impression in a mud puddle. Prior to Sergeants Weir and Jones (Calvin C.) setting out to look for the man they had reason to believe was ²⁴³ the rapist, Sergeant Weir, who had been over the footprint route several times after it had been sealed off by the police, was aware from his examination of the footprint in the mud puddle that they were to look for a shoe with a crepe sole and a finely woven cloth top. As they were on their way toward Crisfield, they saw the suspect they had in mind on a farm tractor pulling a wagon, drove up along side of him, made “certain observations” and took him into custody because he was wearing “the type of shoe [they were] looking for.” After his arrest, the defendant was placed in the police car, his shoes were removed from him and he was taken to the rear of the home of the victim, where his left shoe, after being matched to the footprint in the mud puddle, was determined to be similar. Thereafter the police requested and were allowed by the defendant to search his home.

As a result, various pieces of his clothing were taken, all of which after proof of the chain of custody at the trial, were introduced as evidence. Later, the defendant was taken to Crisfield where he was fingerprinted and palmprinted. Corporal Gary A. Coonradt, an identification expert, who, upon arrival at the home of the victim about 7:00 a.m. on the morning of June 14th, was briefed by Sergeant Weir, testified that, in company with the Sergeant, he traced the footprints leading to and from the rear of the house, took photographs of some of the footprints and made a plaster cast of one of them ; that subsequently, in comparing the left shoe of the defendant with the footprints, he noted the similarity between the plaster cast and the shoes of the defendant and saw some dirt on the side above the instep of the left shoe; that he developed a latent fingerprint on the kitchen window and the headboard of the bed and four latent