Court Opinion

ID: 9634434
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 13:12:04.649492+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:43:08.622935
License: Public Domain

Hammond, J.,
filed the following dissenting opinion.
The testimony in the case could not, as I read it, have permitted the trial judge properly to have been convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Malcolm, the appellant, was guilty of the crime of robbery.
On the night before the robbery, Malcolm went to the apartment of the victim Humphries, drank beer, and because, in the words of Humphries, “he didn’t have no place to stay,” was invited to spend the night, which he did. He was invited to ■come back. He did so the next night with two companions, one named Don and one named Vaughn. At Humphries’ invita*227tion they drank beer and whisky, ate sandwiches and watched television. This went on for several hours. At one point Vaughn repulsed homosexual advances by Humphries. Then Don and Vaughn went in the bathroom for a few minutes. When they came out, Don hit Humphries in the face, put a knife at his Adam’s apple, and he and Vaughn took money from his pocket and various articles from the apartment. Vaughn says Don acted as he did because he had been “drinking so heavy.”
Humphries testified that while all this was going on, Malcolm, the appellant, was sitting in a chair. Humphries’ statement, which the majority says was that Malcolm and Vaughn took some of his beer while Don had the knife at his throat, was equivocal. The most that can fairly and permissibly be gleaned from it is that either Vaughn or Malcolm took the beer, and, in the face of Humphries’ flat statement that Malcolm sat in the chair during the occurrence, it must have been Vaughn who did the taking.
The hypothesis of the trial court and the majority that the three plotted the robbery and were led to the apartment by Malcolm for the purpose of effecting it and that Malcolm aided and abetted the active participants is no more plausible or likely to have been correct than the hypothesis that the three went to Humphries to “free-load” drink and food, that while there, Don and Vaughn, under the influence of drink or revulsion at Humphries’ sexual tendencies, or both, agreed while in the bathroom together to beat and rob him, and did so, without Malcolm having had any prior knowledge they were going to do so. There having been an equal choice between the hypotheses, with the second at least as probable as the first, the State did not show guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Malcolm’s failure to protest or to aid the victim or to call the police was unworthy, and perhaps cowardly, but this would not constitute the omissions a crime. Watson v. State, 208 Md. 210, 219. There was no testimony admitted against Malcolm showing he was active in any way in the assault and robbery or that he shared the fruits of the crime.
I would reverse.