Whitmer v. State

Per Curiam. Appellant was convicted by a jury, on May 3, 1.966, of the offense of larceny of goods in excess of the value of $100, in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, Judge James J. Pugh, presiding. He was sentenced to imprisonment for a term of ten years. This appeal from that judgment and sentence raises two contentions : ¹²⁹ 1) The evidence was not sufficient as a matter of law to convict the appellant of larceny. 2) In the absence of supporting evidence that a confession was actually made, the court should not have denied the motion for judgment of acquittal.

I On October 15, 1965, Mrs. Judith E. H. Dryfoos left her home for work about 7:45 a.m., and when she returned at 7:30 p.m., she noted the back door ajar. She found clothes thrown about and the guest room in general disorder. When Mr. William W. Dryfoos, her husband, arrived home about 9:00 p.m., it was discovered that a guitar and several other items were missing. The guitar was later recovered from a pawnshop in the District of Columbia.

The police found latent prints on a handle of the door to the guest room and on a dresser drawer in that room. The prints were those of the appellant. The testimony and evidence with respect to them were entered in evidence without objection. On December 22, 1965, appellant was interrogated by the Montgomery County Police and made an oral confession.

The record is not clear as to the circumstances of the arrest, but shows that at the time he was charged with housebreaking and larceny. The confession was admitted in evidence without objection and appellant did not contest that it was freely and voluntarily made. He stated that two or three months ago he entered a house through the back door which was unlocked, ransacked the bedrooms and took numerous articles, including a guitar. He did not know the street or house number but the house was surrounded by woods.

(The Dryfoos house is surrounded by woods.) He placed the articles in an automobile in which he had driven up to the house with a companion, the name of whom he would not divulge, and the same day pawned the guitar in the District of Columbia. He did not give the exact time he entered the house, stating it was in the afternoon, probably about 1:00 p.m. Mr. Dryfoos thought the house had been entered “somewhere between four o’clock in the afternoon and seven o’clock in the evening” because a man working in the back pasture from noon to four o’clock “had occasion to go up to the water faucet on the side of the house; the door was ¹³⁰ not open, the back door.” Both Mr. and Mrs. Dryfoos testified they did not know appellant. Mrs. Dryfoos said neither she nor her husband had given anyone permission to take the articles from their home.

Appellant urges that the confession was not “trustworthy” because of the difference in the time the house was entered as stated in the confession and the time Mr. Dryfoos said it was entered, and because in the confession appellant stated he opened the back door but there was no evidence that his prints were found on the door knob. In the confession, appellant said he entered “in the afternoon.” The police officer stated, “He felt probably about one p.m.” These alleged discrepancies were both before the jury for consideration, and go only to the weight of the testimony and not to the admissibility of the confession. Appellant’s main contention is that there was no “actual corroboration” of the confession. It is misleading to state that a confession must be corroborated.

The Court of Appeals said in Johnson v. State, 238 Md. 140 , at page 144: “What we have consistently held is that an extrajudicial