Thomas v. State

Collins, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an appeal by William C. Thomas, appellant, from a judgment and sentence of death for murder in the first degree. Four indictments were returned against the appellant on February 11, 1954, by the Grand Jury for Baltimore City. The first indictment charged the appellant in the first and only count with murder in the first degree of Della Honeyman on January 17, 1954.

The second indictment charged the appellant in the first count on the same date with rape of Della Honeyman; in the second count with assault with intent to rape; and in the third count with assault. The third indictment charged the appellant in the first count on the same date with robbery of the said Della Honeyman; in the second count with assault with intent to rob; in the third count with assault ; in the fourth count with larceny; and in the fifth count with receiving stolen .goods. The fourth indictment charged the appellant in the first count on the same date with burglary of the dwelling house of the said Della Honeyman; in the second count with being a rogue and vagabond; and in the third count with receiving stolen goods. On May 24, 1954, the appellant was arraigned and entered a written plea of not guilty by reason of insanity to each of the charges as set forth in the indictments and to each and every count thereof.

The State elected to proceed to trial on the first indictment and on the first count of each of the other indict-, ments. A jury was empanelled and sworn and the case heard on three, successive days. At the end of the State’s case on May 26, 1954, thé appellant made a motion for an instructed verdict of not guilty, which motion was ⁵⁷⁸ overruled. The appellant then produced his evidence.

At the. end of his case he again moved for an acquittal, which motion was overruled. On May 26, 1954, the jury returned a verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree, rape, robbery, and burglary. After a motion for a new trial was refused by the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City, the appellant on October 8, 1954, was sentenced to death. The appellant, at the time of the alleged crimes, was thirty-two years of age.

He could not read or write, other than write his name. He left school in the third grade. As a young boy he had been confined in the Cheltenham Reformatory. Shortly before the commission of the crimes here he finished serving a fifteen year term in the Maryland Penitentiary for robbery.

He stated in his confession that shortly after midnight of January 16, 1954, he had been drinking. He knocked the window out at the back entrance of 1515 North Gilmor Street in Baltimore with his fist. For the purpose of getting money, he went into the store part. He got some money out of a drawer there.

Miss Honeyman, the owner, came into the store “from the back” where she was sleeping. He ran back to the front part of the store and she followed him. She grabbed him and he grabbed her and threw her down back of the counter. He then grabbed her on the bosom and felt a bag there about as big as his fist.

He choked her and took the bag. She screamed and he hit her head against the floor and raped her. He held his hand over her mouth so that people passing the store would not hear her screams. When testifying he denied he raped her.

He then ran out of the store. He found that the bag contained a large' sum of money in fifty and one hundred dollar bills. He went home and sneaked in the cellar and went to sleep. He awoke at daybreak and went upstairs and gave his mother his coat, which was torn and on which there was blood, and told her to burn it.

He told his family that he had “hit the numbers”, evidently meaning that he had won the money gambling. ⁵⁷⁹ He gave his mother $150.00, his sister $400.00, and his girl friend $100.00. He also gave large sums of money to other friends. With other friends he took a trip to Philadelphia and New York, he paying the expenses. He bought clothes in New York.

On his return to Baltimore he had $1,900.00 left which was stolen from him. He had heard on the radio the day after the attack that Miss Honeyman was dead and he said that was the reason he gave the money away. The report of Dr. Russell S. Fisher, Department of Post Mortem Examiners, gave the cause of death as “asphyxia due to manual strangulation.” Also there were multiple contusions of the head, face, extremities and right breast. There were extensive lacerations and contusions of perineum, vagina and rectum.

The appellant objects to the following part of the charge given by the trial judge to the jury: “Sanity in the Maryland law is defined as the ability to distinguish right from wrong and understand the consequences of acts as applied to one’s self. The test that you must apply is this: At the time of the commission of these acts did the defendant have capacity and reason sufficient to enable him to distinguish between right and wrong, and to understand the nature and consequences of his acts as applied to himself? If at the time he did those things he did have the capacity and reason sufficient to enable him to distinguish between right and wrong and understand the nature and consequences of his acts as applied to himself, then he is a responsible agent and is subject to the criminal law of Maryland, and is sane. But if, at the time of the commission of these offenses, he did not have the capacity and reason sufficient to enable him to distinguish between right and wrong and understand the nature and consequences of his acts as applied to himself, then he is not a responsible agent.

He is not subject to the criminal law of Maryland, and he is insane.” The appellant’s claim of insanity is based largely on the following parts of the testimony of Dr. Manfred Guttmacher, Chief Medical ⁵⁸⁰ Officer of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City, a psychiatrist, to whom appellant had been referred for examination: “* * * poor intellectual endowments but not clearly mentally defective. Cannot read or write. Certainly could conclude from these examinations that the patient is not so defective that he would not realize that it was wrong and illegal to rob, rape and murder. * * * I felt that the patient had sufficient intellectual capacity to know that it was morally and legally wrong to rape, murder, rob or any of the acts of which he is accused, and that he did have sufficient capacity to realize that at that time if he were apprehended he would be punished for these acts. * * * A. I would say of course I think it is highly unlikely that he thought about the nature and consequences of these things at that time, but I think the legal test as I understand it is whether he had the type of mentality which would have made it possible for him had he taken the precaution and time to do so to figure out what he was doing was wrong and that he would get punished for it. I think, of course, it is a very difficult decision to make.

First, you find absolutely no evidence here of a psychosis, insanity. The only thing one has here is a man who has poor intelligence. I do not feel that the man’s intelligence is sufficiently poor so that he would not have had the capacity at that time under these extraordinary conditions to have been able to foresee the consequences. * * * A. * * * I think he had sufficient capacity to do that. I don’t claim he figured that at the time he was aware of all the consequences but I think he had sufficient capacity to make such a distinction. * * * A. * * * certainly psychiatry doesn’t consider these people insane, and I don’t think the law considers these people irresponsible. * * * A. * * * He gives evidence of having. •an undesirable character structure, probably based on life experiences, and also having quite poor intellectual endowments, but not poor enough to consider him actually feeble minded or mentally defective.” ⁵⁸¹ The appellant also relies on the testimony of other witnesses to the effect that at times, before the commission of the offenses here, when drinking, he became hostile and at one time, when drinking and very angry, started toward his mother with a butcher knife and threw the radio against the wall.

Counsel for the appellant argues that the jury in determining appellant’s insanity should take into consideration these hostile tendencies of the appellant when under the influence of alcohol, and the fact that he gave money to persons to whom he was in no way obligated. Appellant also argues that the jury should have been permitted to take into consideration the question of malice, deliberation, and premeditation. Dr. Guttmacher, in explaining the effect of alcohol on certain individuals, said under cross-examination: “Well, the general feeling among psychologists is that alcohol does not create anti-social drives, but that someone had referred to it as a conscience solvent. It dissolves the brake lining, as it were.

It releases strong tendencies which had been there before and kept under pretty good control. But when an individual with these tendencies drinks his controls become much more defective, and that is what I meant. * * * It certainly weakens his controls, and the degree to which it weakens them varies in certain individuals.” Dr. Guttmacher further testified that he found that, although appellant had poor intelligence, he was not considered “actually feeble minded or mentally defective.” The appellant himself stated that the reason he gave away the money was because he learned that Miss Honeyman was dead. He evidently thought that by disposing of the money, he would escape detection by not having the money found on his person. As to the argument that the jury should have been permitted to take into consideration the question of malice, deliberation and premeditation, the appellant here admitted that he broke into the premises for the purpose of robbery.

Code, 1951, Article 27, Section 497, provides: “All murder which shall be committed in the ⁵⁸² perpetration of, or attempt to perpetrate, any rape, sodomy, mayhem, robbery, burglary, or in the escape or attempt to escape from the Maryland Penitentiary, the House of Correction, the Baltimore City Jail, or from any jail or penal institution in any of the counties of this State, shall be murder in the first degree.” The instruction given by the trial judge to the jury is based upon what is generally known as the “right-wrong test”, which was originally adopted in this State in 1888 in the case of Spencer v. State, 69 Md. 28 , 13 A. 809 , which has since been the cornerstone in the law here on the question of criminal responsibility of an accused claiming to be insane. That case has been consistently followed by the courts of Maryland. It was said in that case by Chief Judge Alvey, Judge Bryan dissenting: “Was the evidence admissible to prove insanity, that is to say, such condition of mind, as, by the law of the. land, would render the prisoner irresponsible for his acts? There has been, and is still, a great variety of opinion entertained upon this subject, and especially among members of the medical profession who have written upon the subject of medical jurisprudence.

Doubtless the subject, has been much elucidated by the repeated discussions that have taken place. But, in Courts of justice where definite principles, and not mere theories, must be given practical application, and that too with a view to the safety of society, as well as for the protection of the particular individual accused, tests that have received the sanction of experience and the approval of the ablest jurists of our age, must be accepted and applied as the established law. And according to the law, as we find it settled by the great preponderance of judicial authority, if the party accused be competent to form and execute a criminal design; or, in other words, if at the time of the commission of the alleged offense, he had capacity and reason sufficient to enable him to distinguish between right and wrong; and understand the nature and consequences of his act, as applied to himself, he is