Opinion ID: 1974181
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Mefford's Contentions

Text: The argument that the evidence was insufficient to convict is made because Snider said he did not recognize the men who robbed him. Whatever the reason  perhaps the shortness of the time they had worked at the same station some two years before, or the stress and effect of the shooting  the confessions of Mefford (which we find to have been properly admitted), considered with the proof of the corpus delicti and the facts that Mefford's pistol was used to shoot Snider, his motive for the shooting (feared recognition by Snider) and the presence of a car like Mefford's near the scene at the time of the shooting, certainly properly permitted the triers of fact to have been persuaded, as they were, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Mefford was one of the two guilty men. Mefford's claim on the inadmissibility of his confessions is that he was illegally arrested and illegally detained and was denied the right to call his family or a lawyer. He was arrested about ten-thirty in the morning on April 20 by the Baltimore County police who wanted to question him about the robbery at Route 40 at Chesaco and, incidentally, about the case at Route 40 and Joppa. He was interrogated during the day and then placed in a cell in which there was a metal bunk and toilet facilities. The next day, Saturday, he was again questioned, and at about 4:30 was taken to the Essex police station, which was better equipped for overnight prisoners, for the weekend. He was not questioned Saturday night, Sunday (which was Easter), or Sunday night but, he says, permitted to sleep when he wanted to, without interruption. He was fed regularly although he says the meals were not good, particularly one consisting of a cold hamburger and a cup of cold coffee. He says he asked on numerous occasions for a chance to call his family and a lawyer, but was refused. He says also that he was told he would be held seventy-two hours and then released, but picked up again and held for a similar period, and so on, until he confessed. He does not claim he was otherwise in any way coerced or that he was physically manhandled and says the County police did not break him down. Indeed, he does not claim (and there is no testimony that it was a fact) that the County police questioned him about the crime the State police were investigating. On Monday morning he was brought back to Towson and, after being questioned for a short time, was given back his belongings, including a knife, and released. He was arrested outside the Towson police headquarters by Corporal Seekford, of the State police, who was in charge of the investigation of the Joppa case, and who had been told by the County police that they had in custody a particular suspect in the Joppa case whom they were going to release. Mefford's wife had called the County police during the weekend and had been told she could see her husband Monday at Towson. When she arrived Mefford had been released but he left with the police his endorsed paycheck  which she was seeking  and the police gave it to her. His reason for leaving the check, he told the police, was that he was not going home and he was not afraid to leave the endorsed check with the police because, he said, [i]f you can't trust the police, who can you trust? Corporal Seekford took Mefford to Benson Barracks near Bel Air where, Mefford says, he was given the first decent meal he had had since his arrest. After lunch Seekford took Mefford to the North East Barracks where Sergeant Stacey, the polygraph expert, had his headquarters and his apparatus. Stacey talked to him for an hour or so, and then he was given supper. After supper Stacey again questioned Mefford for an hour and a half. The officers testified that Mefford at that point volunteered that he would clear up the Route 40 cases if he could see his wife and arrange for the sale of his car so she would have some money. This suggestion came from him, not from the police. As a result of the questioning at North East Barracks, Corporal Seekford took Mefford on a trip in a police car. They left about ten that night (Monday, April 23) and, driving slowly, with a stop for a soft drink, arrived at Mefford's home in Armistead Gardens near Baltimore about an hour later. On the way Mefford says he gave Seekford the knife he had (with which, he said, he could have inflicted the officer, the State police not, apparently, having searched him). Mefford greeted his wife and child and then got from her the keys to a 1950 Plymouth car, which was in their garage. A search of the trunk of the Plymouth for the murder weapon, which Mefford expected to be there, produced nothing. Seekford next drove Mefford past 723 Luzerne Avenue in Baltimore, where Blackburn lived, and then out Route 40 to Chesaco, where Mefford made several telephone calls, including one to his brother-in-law, Irvin Ellis, who lived near Reisterstown. Accompanied by Detective White, of the County police, who had joined them at Chesaco, they drove to Ellis' place where, at Mefford's request, Ellis gave Seekford a white bag in which were a .32 calibre Savage pistol  the murder weapon  and a sawed off shot gun (Ellis had taken them from the Plymouth to protect Mefford when he learned he was in police custody). Seekford took Mefford to Towson where he was incarcerated until morning and then returned him to the North East Barracks. (Seekford and other police officers went in the early morning hours to arrest Blackburn at Luzerne Avenue, after Mefford had been taken to Towson.) On the trip during the night of the 23rd, Mefford at various times gave a full account of the robbery and murder and of the participation in it of Blackburn and himself, attributing the shooting of Snider with his (Mefford's) gun to Blackburn. In the morning of April 24, he repeated the confessions to a police stenographer in the form of answers to questions asked by a police officer. The stenographer transcribed the statement but Mefford would not sign it until he saw his wife, as the police had told him the day before he could, and told her about the case and the circumstances, first hand. Mrs. Mefford was brought to the Barracks about eleven o'clock on Tuesday, April 24, and she and Mefford talked for fifteen minutes. She went home and he signed the confession. The witnesses were sequestered at both trials. Each of the police officers who had any part in the confessions of Mefford, or contact with him in connection therewith, testified in detail that no threats were made or coercion applied and no inducements offered or promises made to procure any part or the whole of any confession. The Baltimore County police did not testify. After Corporal Seekford, in his testimony as to the events leading up to Mefford's oral confession, mentioned that he had been in custody of the County police for three days, Mefford's counsel suggested that the State had the burden of producing the County police as part of a showing of voluntariness. The State offered to do so, but the court said it did not think it necessary at that point, and Mefford's counsel seemingly acquiesced. After Mefford had testified, the State again offered to produce the County policemen if the court thought it necessary. The court said that Mefford's testimony, assuming it to be true, showed that the treatment he received from the County police did not at the time cause him to break down and had not influenced his subsequent confessions, and admitted both into evidence. Mefford's counsel then again seemingly acquiesced. Mefford, in testifying on voluntariness of his confessions, reiterated from the stand that all he had said in them was true. He said he thought the State and County police would bounce him back and forth between them if he did not confess, although he admits the State police did and said nothing to make him think this. He did not ask the State police for a lawyer at any time, or suggest that he wanted one, because the County police had refused, he said, to let him call one. He admits that the State police treated him very well and, in addition to his testimony from the stand to that effect, in his written confession in answer to how have you been treated since you have been in the custody of the Maryland State police, he replied: That's a good question. How do you put that. Fair. Good, I guess. Couldn't say excellent. Could say like a gentleman, but that's not my language. He told the court that the police did not make his confession a condition precedent to his seeing his wife, but that the offer was his. When asked by the court if he had volunteered to give the written statement if he saw his wife, he agreed he had, saying [u]nder the situation and the strain I was in I had no other choice. Immediately thereafter he confirmed to the court that he had been well treated by Seekford and Stacey, the only State policemen with whom he had been in contact, and could not be specific about his situation and the strain which left him no choice. We think the trial judges had full reason to conclude, as they did, that Mefford's confessions were the voluntary products of a free and unconstrained will, which, as a matter of fact, had not been overborne or compelled.