West v. State

Per Curiam. The Appellant, James Lester West, was convicted of second degree murder by Judges E. McMaster Duer and William W. Travers, sitting without a jury, in the Circuit Court for Somerset County (the case having been removed from Baltimore City) and was sentenced to eighteen years imprisonment. This was his second trial, his first trial having been set aside on the basis of Schowgurow v. State, 240 Md. 121 . According to the record, West, at the request of Robert Freeman, the deceased, and Miss Eunice Sheperd, with whom the deceased had lived for seventeen years, drove them and their three children in his car from Baltimore to Sykesville on the morning of August 16, 1963, where they spent the day.

The ¹²⁶ adults consumed approximately eighteen bottles of beer and three pints of whiskey. According to Miss Sheperd, there were some arguments between her and the deceased on their way back to Baltimore and she also testified that when West refused to stop the car at Freeman’s request, Freeman urinated in the back seat. West says he knew nothing of this until he was told about it upon their return to Baltimore. When they arrived back in Baltimore between 7:00 P.M. and 8:00 P.M., West drove them to his home and went in, ostensibly, to use the bathroom.

West returned to the car, found his wife standing there talking to Freeman and Miss Sheperd, the children were let out, and the four adults drove three and one half blocks to Freeman’s home. Upon arrival, everyone alighted from the car and Freeman had started in the house when West called to him and requested that he help bring in some articles from the car. According to Miss Sheperd and a Miss Johnson, who lived across the street, Freeman, upon his return to the car, was shot in the back by West as Freeman walked to the rear of the car to open the door and he was shot, again, in the chest when he whirled around. West then got into his car and drove off.

Freeman was taken to a hospital and died a few hours later: West testified that as Freeman returned to the car, he drew a knife and started after him, whereupon West shot him, first in the chest and then in the back of the shoulder in self defense. Both Miss Sheperd and Miss Johnson denied seeing Freeman draw a knife. In this appeal, West first contends that subsequent to the decision in Schowgurow, supra, no valid indictment may be handed down until the Maryland Constitution has been literally amended by a “Legislative enactment or a vote of the people.” This contention was raised in Hutchinson v. State, 1 Md. App. 362 and found by this Court to be “utterly without merit”. See also Powell v. State, 1 Md. App. 495 .

Likewise, the contention that his reindictment and retrial placed him in double jeopardy is