Swartz v. State

Hammond, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellant was convicted by Judge Grady, sitting without a jury, of two charges of larceny. On appeal he argues that his arrest was illegal, that photographs of the stolen articles seized from his car at the time of his arrest and an oral confession were improperly admitted into evidence against him, and that the evidence did not establish the corpus delicti and was insufficient to sustain the trial court’s finding of guilt. The arresting officers had been summoned by radio to investigate a breaking into a warehouse at Paca and Pratt Streets in Baltimore.

They found two men in the building who fled and were arrested by other policemen outside the building. Two other men escaped and a car was heard hastily leaving the warehouse which had been burglarized of a number of boxes. The police noted that some of the boxes apparently had been removed from a pile which had been systematically arranged outside the building. They drove off in the squad car seeking to ²⁶⁵ find' the automobile that had fled the scene.

Six blocks away they saw a car “turn out in front of us rather fast” and observing a box in the trunk (the trunk top being open) immediately thought it was the car for which they were looking, and stopped it. The box in the trunk was partially open and in it could be seen an air conditioner. On the rear seat were a number of other boxes which contained plumbing fixtures. Not satisfied with the story of the appellant that he was transporting the goods of his employer from one job site to another after midnight, the officers arrested him.

We think the officers had probable cause to believe that the appellant had committed and was in the process of committing a felony, that is, a prior wrongful taking and a present wrongful asportation of goods of a value of $100.00 or more. Inasmuch as the arrest was legal, the use of the goods seized as an incident of