Watkins v. State

Hornby, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The Criminal Court of Baltimore in a nonjury case convicted the defendant (James E. Watkins) of armed robbery and he appealed. In this Court, the only questions raised relate to the quality of the evidence produced in the trial court, that is, whether the evidence was so inadequate as to require granting ³⁵⁹ the motions for judgment of acquittal, or whether the evidence was legally sufficient to warrant the conviction. Shortly after 9:00 p.m. in the evening of November 1, 1963, a man entered a service station on Reisterstown Road and asked the attendant for an automobile battery.

When the attendant started to get one from a rear room, the man drew a revolver and demanded money. A second man, carrying a plastic bag, then entered the station and ordered the attendant to place the money (between $130 and $140) into the bag. The attendant complied. A customer, who was waiting outside for service on his automobile but who did not see the holdup, became suspicious when, upon seeing one man enter the station, he saw two leave, join a third waiting at a parked ^automobile and drive off.

After jotting down the license number, the customer entered the station, learned of the holdup and promptly notified the police and gave them a description of the automobile and the license number. About an hour later, a police officer, while halting an automobile fitting the description and license number of the one to which he had been alerted, saw the driver and sole occupant attempt to conceal something over the sun visor. After the arrest of the driver, a search of the vehicle disclosed a plastic bag containing several dollars in coin. On being taken to a police station, the driver denied any knowledge of or participation in the holdup, but a search of his person revealed $89 in currency having an odor of gasoline and oil.

At the trial, the station attendant, although unable to recognize the defendant at the preliminary hearing, positively identified him as the man who had ordered him to put the money into the plastic bag. The attendant also identified the bag taken from the automobile as the one used in the holdup. Although it was dark and raining on the night of the robbery, the attendant also testified that he had seen the automobile drive in and out of the service station several times before parking. He had previously identified the automobile on the police impounding lot soon after the arrest of the defendant.

He identified it again from a photograph at the trial. The customer, who had written down the license number of the parked automobile, was unable to identify the defendant as ³⁶⁰ a participant in the robbery either at several police lineups or at the trial. In fact, he excluded the defendant as one of the men he saw leave the service station after the holdup. He did, however, identify the automobile at the impounding lot as the one used in the robbery.

The license number which he had written on a vending machine inside the station was also identified by the customer as the same one he had recorded. The defendant, in testifying for himself, denied, as he had done while being interrogated at the police station, that he participated in the robbery. Although he could not explain how his automobile came to be used in the robbery, the defendant claimed that at the time of the holdup he was in a tavern in Catonsville where he had gone in the early evening in search of a tavern employee whom he knew only as Mary. He left the tavern in his automobile after spending several hours there, and it was after he had left that the arrest took place.

He explained the presence of the plastic bag in his automobile by testifying that he was a “numbers” collector for an employer he knew as Cleo. He attempted to conceal the