Opinion ID: 1987756
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Conspiracy To Rob

Text: Under the other indictment (No. 3307/61), the defendant was charged with conspiring with Alfred Pittore, George Barry, Ralph Norton and others to rob Frank Speca with a dangerous and deadly weapon. The record discloses that Speca, who was accustomed to carrying large sums of money and had been previously robbed, testified that he had received a telephone call at a public booth from a man (then unknown to him but later identified as the defendant), who told him that he would show him who had stolen his money on the prior occasion. In response to the call, Speca picked up the defendant and as directed drove to and parked on a vacant lot, where another man, after whistling to the defendant, came out of some bushes and joined them. Speca was then forced down a hill to a point under a bridge, where three other men, wearing steel helmets and brandishing revolvers, met them. The victim was robbed at gun point by the defendant (whom he subsequently identified at a police line-up) and the other conspirators and, during a scuffle that ensued, was shot in the hand. Bernard Braxton, another state witness, testified that the defendant, on the day before the robbery, after telling him that he had been approached by a man who wanted some persons beaten, asked Braxton (in the company of Norton) to participate in the beatings, which he refused to do. In a statement to the police, the defendant admitted his participation in the conspiracy and robbery, and, in a subsequent statement, exonerated Braxton (whom he had named in the prior statement) from any complicity in either the conspiracy to rob or the robbery. Subsequently, the defendant showed the police where Speca had picked him up, the location of the vacant lot and the scene of the robbery under the bridge. In this case, where it is contended that the State failed to sufficiently prove the corpus delicti to permit introduction of the statements made by the defendant, there was considerable other evidence to show that the defendant had entered into a conspiracy with others to rob Speca. In addition to the testimony of the victim as to the obviously planned appearances, on the parking lot and under the bridge, of the other participants in the scheme, the defendant had shown the police where the several events leading to the robbery had taken place; and there was also the testimony of Braxton, who was not a party to any of the transactions leading to the ultimate robbery, that he had been solicited by the defendant, in the presence of one of the conspirators, to participate in a beating of other persons. This evidence, together with the statements of the defendant, was enough to show that the defendant and the other participants in the robbery were engaged in the furtherance of a common objective. Greenwald v. State, 221 Md. 245, 157 A.2d 119 (1960). A conspiracy may be shown by circumstantial evidence permitting an inference of a common design. Piracci v. State, 207 Md. 499, 115 A.2d 262 (1955). Furthermore, although it is further contended that even if there was a conspiracy, it was not the one with which the defendant was charged (it being alleged that the plot was to extort money from the victim), there was sufficient evidence from which the trial court could find that the defendant was guilty of the offense charged in the indictment. Since there was such evidence, the rule stated in Adams v. State, 202 Md. 455, 459, 97 A.2d 281 (1953), that the evidence must establish the conspiracy charged and not some other conspiracy, relied on by the defendant, was satisfied. Finding no error in either case, the judgments will be affirmed. Judgments affirmed.