Watts v. State

Per Curiam. The lower court, at a trial without a jury, found the defendants guilty of conspiracy under one indictment and of larceny under another indictment. Claiming that the court erred in finding them guilty on the uncorroborated testimony of an accomplice, both defendants appealed. In a telephone call received by the police on July 12, 1962, they were informed that the Ace Currency Exchange had been held up and robbed.

On their arrival at the exchange, the employee in charge told the police that she had been alone at the time of the holdup, that the robbers had forced her at gun point to hand over $7000 in cash, and that the robbers then made her sit down on her hands and taped her legs. But, four days later, when she was again questioned, she told the police that she and the defendants had planned a “fake holdup” and that on the day of the alleged robbery she had, in accordance with the plan, turned over the stolen money to one of the defendants, taped herself, waited a few minutes, and then called the police. Since not much in the way of corroboration is required to substantiate the testimony of an accomplice, Wright v. State, 219 Md. 643 , there was ample evidence in the instant case to support the testimony of the accomplice as to some of the material facts tending to show that the defendants were identifiable with her and had participated in the conspiracy and theft. The testimony of the accomplice that the defendants had met with her on several occasions in her apartment, when the faked robbery was