Thomas v. State

Murphy, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Appellant was convicted on July 21, 1966 by the court sitting without a jury of robbery with a deadly weapon and sentenced to ten years imprisonment in the Maryland Penitentiary. He contends on this appeal from that judgment that (a) his statement to police, which was introduced in evidence against him, was involuntary, and (b) that the evidence was insufficient to support the conviction. There was evidence adduced at the trial from which the trier of fact could find that on November 15, 1965, the appellant, an owner of a tavern in Cambridge, Maryland, drove from Cambridge with one Matto, a companion and employee, to Salisbury, Maryland, where he rented a 1965 Chevrolet, bearing District of Columbia license tags; that the appellant and Matto then returned to Cambridge in the rented car and later that afternoon drove to a lot abutting on Pleasant Street in Cambridge; that appellant remained in the car with the engine running, while Matto walked down Pleasant Street to the home of Mr. and Mrs. William Jones, where he robbed them at gun point of some $32,800.00, including a $1,000.00 bill, two $500.00 bills, a quantity of $100.00 bills and $20.00 bills, and assorted coins (Matto being identified as the robber by the Joneses) ; that after the robbery, appellant and Matto drove to a bar in Salisbury where they bought drinks for everyone, including two six-packs of beer for each patron, and exhibited both a $1,000.00 bill and a $500.00 bill; and that after the establishment closed, they returned the rental car and appellant drove his own car back to Cambridge, leaving Matto in Salisbury.

The appellant was arrested on November 18 and taken to the Cambridge police headquarters where, in the presence of ⁵⁰⁵ his counsel, he gave the police a statement concerning the robbery. It is this statement that he contends was involuntary on the ground that it was induced by promises of bail reduction and lenient treatment. We do not agree. The burden of showing that a confession offered in evidence is a voluntary act of the accused is on the State.

Mercer v. State, 237 Md. 479 ; Cooper v. State, 1 Md. App. 190 . The Supreme Court in Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1 , stated the test of voluntariness in State criminal prosecutions to be as follows (page 7) : “* * * the constitutional inquiry is not whether the conduct of state officers in obtaining the confession was shocking, but whether the confession was ‘free and voluntary: that is, [it] must not be extracted by any sort of threats or violence, nor obtained by any direct or implied promises, however slight, nor by the exertion of any improper influence. * * At the trial, both the State’s Attorney and appellant’s lawyer at the time the statement was taken, William Yates, testified that no specific inducements had ever been made to appellant. More specifically, Yates testified that appellant insisted upon making a statement, and that he had advised him that he could tell the truth, but that he didn’t have to make any statement. Yates further testified that he felt that the role of a State’s witness would be “a good part” for appellant and that he had consulted the State’s Attorney about using appellant as such, but that the State’s Attorney “did not promise me anything”; that he, Yates, told the appellant that “if he told the truth * * * he would — could get possibly some consideration”; that he further advised the appellant that if he told the truth he thought the State’s Attorney would give him some consideration with respect to his bond, “but that there was no promise of immunity, no promises of a lack of prosecution or anything else.” While appellant does not claim that either the police or the State’s Attorney induced his statement by any promises made directly to him, he nevertheless argues that both hope and promise were held out to him by his own attorney acting as a “mere conveyor” for the State’s Attorney for the purpose of inducing him to make a statement; and that this hope and ⁵⁰⁶ promise was in the form of a reduction in bail and the implied promise that he would get “consideration” if he told the truth.

His position appears predicated upon the fact that initially he refused to make any statement, and that the statement which he finally gave followed a telephone conversation between the State’s Attorney and his lawyer, Yates, carried on in appellant’s presence, at which time he overheard Yates’s side of the conversation and was led to believe therefrom that there was a possibility of bail reduction and lenient treatment. While we cannot say that appellant was not influenced in making a statement by what he heard of the conversation