Court Opinion

ID: 9754859
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:16:55.905+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:59.803510
License: Public Domain

*283
Murphy, C. J.,

concurring in part and dissenting in part

I agree with the majority that the search and arrest were lawful, and that the incriminating statement taken from the appellant was properly admitted in evidence. I do not agree, however, that the trial judge erred in denying appellant’s motion for separate trials and that that error mandates that the judgments be reversed and the appellant afforded new and separate trials as to each offense.
We noted in McKnight v. State, 280 Md. 604, 375 A. 2d 551 (1977) that the matter of joinder and severance of criminal trials under what is now Maryland Rule 745 is committed to the sound discretion of the trial judge. Under the rule, offenses are properly consolidated for trial where the evidence to be adduced as to each would be mutually admissible at separate trials for the same offenses, the basis being that the crimes charged are so nearly identical in method as to earmark them as the handiwork of the accused, viz., that they are so unusual and distinctive as to be like a signature. Cross v. State, 282 Md. 468, 386 A. 2d 757 (1978); McKnight v. State, supra; Ross v. State, 276 Md. 664, 350 A. 2d 680 (1976); and C. McCormick, McCormick’s Handbook of the Law of Evidence (2d ed., 1972), § 190.
As so well chronicled in the majority opinion, the robberies occurred at pharmacies in Montgomery County located approximately one mile apart, within three days of each other, during approximately the same hour of the afternoon, at gunpoint, by two white men who on each occasion demanded that specific drugs, together with cash, be placed in a bag or sack which the robbers tendered for that purpose, along with advice that the victims remain “cool” during the perpetration of the crimes. The physical descriptions of the robbers were essentially the same and on both occasions they wore red ski caps, truly a distinctive item of clothing. That one of the robbers in the first offense wore a mustache while at the second both robbers were clean shaven, is at best a weak circumstance to be considered since mustaches are so easily removed; had one of the robbers had the mustache at the second robbery, rather than the first, the matter of identity may well have been another matter.
*284The short of it is that these striking likenesses are such as plainly earmarked the offenses as the handiwork of the same individuals. In the exercise of a sound discretion the trial judge could properly so conclude. To hold on these facts that the trial judge abused his discretion in denying the motions to sever is to deliver a fatal blow to the intended flexibility of the operation of Rule 745.