Court Opinion

ID: 9717258
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:00:56.086736+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:13:30.803925
License: Public Domain

*505McAULIFFE, Judge,
dissenting.
I agree that the issue of the legal sufficiency of the evidence is properly before us. I also agree with the interpretation that the Court has now given to the misdemeanor offenses of breaking and entering proscribed by Article 27, §§ 31A and 31B. I dissent only from the determination that the evidence was insufficient as a matter of law to support the convictions of theft and of breaking and entering.
I.
Breaking and Entering
As the majority points out, a person is not guilty of the misdemeanor offense of breaking and entering if he acted on the reasonable belief that he was authorized to break and enter. That belief must be 1) objectively reasonable and 2) actually held. This exposition of the law will come as no surprise to the attorneys who tried this case. War-field’s attorney argued to the jury that under the circumstances it was “perfectly reasonable” for Warfield to have gone into the garage in order to open the garage doors and thus facilitate the shoveling of snow. She told the jury that authority to enter the garage was “implied in doing the job.” She said:
[0]ur contention is that; — -that a person shoveling snow in the — around the garage had implied consent to go into the garage. Certainly, he was never told not to go into the garage, and it’s perfectly reasonable to think that a person who’s shoveling snow might very well go into the garage, and Larry Warfield1 testified he did when he shoveled.
The prosecutor countered:
Ms. Campbell asked you to believe that it was reasonable for the Defendant to go into the garage to shovel the *506snow. The defense witnesses, particularly Larry War-field, would have you believe that it’s reasonable for him to go into the garage when he shoveled snow. Mrs. Weller was adamant that there was no need to go into that. Of course, Mrs. Weller said she never had Larry Warfield shovel snow for her. The implication in the defense testimony is that, well, it’s reasonable, other folks have done it, going into the garage; therefore, he had a right to go in there. No need to go into the garage, he could shovel from the outside, down the sidewalk, up to the garage doors on this apron to the garage door— doors themselves, no need to go in there to open those doors.
The defendant, as was his absolute right, did not testify. Why he went into the garage, and whether he held the honest belief that he was authorized to enter the garage through a closed door, had to be gleaned from the surrounding circumstances and from the three reasons he had given earlier for his entry. When the complainant saw the defendant exiting the garage, she immediately confronted him, demanding to know why he had entered. He said he had to open the garage doors to shovel the snow. As the following testimony of the complainant discloses, she pointed out to Warfield why that explanation would not hold water, and he changed his story:
And he said we’d have to get the garage doors open to shovel the snow. There’s a — well, a little ramp between the street and the garage. He said he had to get the garage — have the garage doors open to shovel that snow and that wasn’t so at all because the snow’s out here and the doors are here. So, I told him that, I said, you didn’t *507need to go in the garage for that at all. He said, well, I got tired. I went in to rest.
A third explanation for the defendant’s entry was given to the police officer who arrested him on the following day. On that occasion, the defendant said he went into the garage to clean his boots.
Cross-examination of the complainant only served to reinforce her testimony that there was absolutely no need to enter the garage in order to shovel the snow.
Defense Attorney: So the person who was to shovel your snow needed to go in the garage to open up the door to be
Complainant: You didn’t have to have the door opened.
Defense Attorney: Are you saying that neither the— Kevin Warfield, or anyone else who shoveled for you before this episode, opened the garage door?
Complainant: They’ve never even been in the garage. There was no need to.
Defense Attorney: How do you know that?
Complainant: When your garage doors come down straight and the snow is here, you don’t have to have those doors open to shovel the snow out here. Heavens.
I cannot square this testimony with the majority’s conclusion that, as a matter of law, Warfield harbored a reasonable belief that “it was necessary in the performance of his duties that he open the garage door and enter the garage to get at the snow piled against the door.” Majority opinion at [501].
Moreover, because the jurors could readily have found that Warfield lied about why he went into the garage, they were at liberty to infer a consciousness of guilt on his part.2
[C]hanges in defendant’s explanation or conflicting admissions may support a finding of scienter, since while either of defendant’s stories may be true, both cannot be and *508the changes indicate an attempt to hide the guilty knowledge.
Carter v. State, 10 Md.App. 50, 55, 267 A.2d 743 (1970). The evidence was sufficient to support the conviction of unlawful breaking and entering.
II.
Theft
Much of what I have said concerning the sufficiency of the evidence to prove an unlawful breaking and entering applies with equal force to consideration of the theft charge. The inference of guilty knowledge, fairly drawn if the jury concluded the defendant had lied concerning his reason for entering the garage, applies here as well. The finding that Warfield had unlawfully broken and entered the garage is material to the question of whether he stole the coins.
The majority says that “[i]t was also not certain just when Mrs. Weller had last seen the smaller can after she removed it from the trunk and placed it in the garage.” Majority opinion at [480]. I disagree. The complainant testified unequivocally that she had been in the garage the night before, and had observed that the coin can and the nearby boxes were “all lined up in order with the lids on and the cans where they belonged.” The next morning, when she went outside to confront the defendant after seeing him emerge from the garage, she saw that the boxes were “dissembled,” one of the cans of coins was gone, and a broom that had been standing in a corner was on the floor and broken.3 The defendant offered testimony that the complainant expressed some uncertainty about when she had last seen the coins. The jury was under no obligation to accept that testimony, however, and would have been *509fully justified in finding that Mrs. Weller knew exactly when she had last seen the coins.
This is a circumstantial evidence case, and it is a close one. I am persuaded, however, that the testimony was legally sufficient to support the conviction of theft.
III.
Conclusion
The evidence was legally sufficient to support a finding that the defendant broke the storehouse and stole therefrom money of the value of $5.00 or upwards. The Court of Special Appeals held that the theft conviction merged into the conviction of storehousebreaking and stealing, and I agree. I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals.
RODOWSKY, J., joins in Part I of this opinion.

. Larry Warfield is the defendant’s brother. He testified that about one week after this incident he went to the complainant’s home to *506shovel snow. He testified that although he knew his brother had just been arrested for going into the complainant’s garage and stealing coins, he also went into the garage and opened a garage door to facilitate shoveling. The complainant denied that Larry Warfield had shoveled snow for her. The jury was free to reject Larry Warfield’s testimony.

. The availability of this inference was not lost on the prosecutor, who forcefully argued this point to the jury.

. The defendant admitted he had broken the broom. He told the complainant he did not know how that happened. The next day he told the police he had broken the broom when he went in the garage to clean his boots.