Court Opinion

ID: 9701105
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:05:16.494232+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:19.369517
License: Public Domain

Orth, J.,
concurring:
I fully agree with the holding of the Court affirming the judgment on the 1st count charging robbery and vacating the judgment on each of the 2nd and 3rd counts for the reason that the offenses therein charged merged into the robbery, the true test under the modern concept of merger of offenses being whether one crime necessarily involves the other. Tender v. State, 2 Md. App. 692, 699. I think it advisable, however, to clarify the holding with respect to the merger of the offense charged in the 3rd count into the robbery. The 3rd count charged an assault and a battery and the evidence established *619that there was both an assault and a battery. We have held heretofore that an assault merges into a robbery, Price v. State, 3 Md. App. 155, 160, but we have not held specifically that assault and battery is so merged. According to Clark and Marshall, Lato of Crimes, 6th Ed. “a simple assault under common law is typified by an attempt or offer, with unlawful force or violence, to do a corporeal hurt to another,” § 10.15, p. 642, and “any unlawful injury whatsoever, however slight, actually done to the person of another, directly or indirectly, in an angry, revengeful, rude, or insolent manner, is a battery,” § 10.19, p. 654. Thus every battery includes an assault, so that on an indictment for assault and battery one may be convicted of assault only. See 1 Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown, c. 15, § 2. Robbery is the felonious taking and carrying away of the personal property of another, from his person or in his presence, by violence, actual or constructive. Clark and Marshall, swpra, § 12.09, p. 781. Robbery must be accompanied by violence and the putting in fear is constructive violence. Where there is no putting in fear there must be actual violence but where there is actual violence there need be no putting in fear. So if the felon strikes his victim, rendering him unconscious, and then takes money from his person, robbery is committed. There is actual violence if there is any injury to the person of another, or if he resists the attempt to rob him and his resistance is overcome, however slight the resistance. Ibid, § 12.13, pp. 787-789; § 12.14, pp. 789-793. It appears then that actual violence may be equated to a battery and intimidation to an assault. So, actual violence may encompass a battery, which includes an assault, and a robbery, where the taking is by actual violence, by injury to the person of the victim, as was the case here, necessarily involves an assault and battery, and the assault and battery merges into the robbery.