Opinion ID: 2338584
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

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Text: When shown the slips at the trial, the officer testified that, by using this code, these slips represented numbers and the amount placed thereon. Officer Timothy Breslan testified as follows about a conversation with the appellant: While I was removing  well at the outset of this conversation I just mentioned, the Lieutenant had mentioned to Mr. Chernock that the Sergeant had broken his code, and he mentioned the word `FRESH BACON' and then as I was taking a telephone out of the vestibule or the hallway in the front room just below the stairs Mr. Chernock said to me, asked me if there was no key written to a code was it possible to break it and prove that it was a code, and I told him I didn't know. On cross-examination, Sergeant O'Donnell testified that he remained on the premises approximately two hours working on this code. He stated, in response to a question on cross-examination, that he had had no experience with the art of cryptography. The appellant contends that the trial judge erred in permitting Sergeant O'Donnell to testify that certain groups of letters of the alphabet inscribed on the slips of paper, found on appellant's premises, were lottery numbers and bets thereon because the sergeant was not especially qualified to decipher codes and that by doing so, he usurped the function of the jury and, further, that there was no proof whatever that the letters of the alphabet found on three slips in appellant's home were in cipher code or, if so, what that code was. In Nolan v. State, 157 Md. 332, 146 A. 268, the appellant was indicted and convicted on a gambling charge. In his possession had been found papers with figures, writing and hierogliphics which were more or less meaningless to persons unfamiliar with bookmaking. In that case Sergeant Koch testified that for seven years he had been working almost exclusively on bookmaking cases and had handled seventy-five or one hundred cases, and by reason of that experience was familiar with the writings and figures upon papers used by bookmakers. He was able to explain and interpret the meaning of them. An objection was made to the admissibility of Sergeant Koch's testimony, because Sergeant Koch, who made the arrest and seized the papers and memorandum, was allowed to explain to the jury their character and the use made of them by the appellant in the commission of the offense. This Court, in holding this testimony admissible, stated: It is shown by the evidence that the meaning of the figures, words, etc., appearing upon the papers and memoranda admitted in evidence, and used by Nolan in the commission of the offense of which he was convicted, were altogether of a technical character and their meaning known only to those familiar with the methods of book-making, and, therefore, it was right and proper that Koch, an expert in matters of book-making, should be allowed to explain their meaning. This was necessary in order to properly place such evidence before the jury for its consideration. Aetna Indem. Co. v. Waters, 110 Md. 692; Williams v. Woods, 16 Md. 251; Cecil Bank v. Farmers' Bank, 22 Md. 155; Roberts v. Bonaparte, 73 Md. 199; Leftwitch v. Royal Ins. Co., 91 Md. 612; Needy v. Middlekauff, 102 Md. 183; 16 C.J. 746; Douglass v. State, 18 Ind. 289; Badart v. Foulon, 80 Md. 589. Even if the officer's explanation of the writings be considered an opinion, that opinion is based upon plain and easily understood facts which were clearly explained by the officer to the court and jury and were therefore admissible. Watts v. State, 99 Md. 30, 36, 38, 57 A. 542; Weller v. State, 150 Md. 278, 282-283, 132 A. 624; Smith v. State, 182 Md. 176, 182-183, 32 A.2d 863. In the case of State v. Wetherell, 70 Ver. 274, 40 A. 728, the prisoner was tried for rape. He mailed to the prosecutrix a copy of a magazine in which, as the State's testimony tended to show, certain words and letters in said magazine were marked and dotted by the prisoner for the purpose of influencing the prosecutrix, who testified to having picked out the words and sentences after she received the magazine. The trial court permitted an attorney, whom it found to be an expert on handwriting, to pick out, arrange and construct into sentences the marked and dotted words and letters, and to testify what they meant when read in the order in which they were marked. This decipherment disclosed a communication expressive of love and an injunction to remember her promise. This testimony was held to be admissible. The court there said: If the prisoner marked and dotted those words and letters, the communication was as much a letter from him as though he had written the same thing in his own hand; and it was competent to call anyone to make the decipherment, whether expert or not, as much as it would be to read a letter so illegibly written as to be difficult to make out. If the prisoner claimed that the witness did not decipher correctly, he was at liberty to show it. Likewise, here, if the inscriptions on the slips found in appellant's house were not in cipher code and did not represent what Sergeant O'Donnell testified they did represent, the appellant was at liberty to show it. Finding no error, the judgment will be affirmed. Judgment affirmed, with costs.