Court Opinion

ID: 9706921
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:55:25.176673+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:25.985473
License: Public Domain

KARWACKI, Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. In my view, the majority has departed from settled Maryland precedent in concluding that the trial judge erred in admitting the testimony of Andre Spells concerning incriminating admissions made to *269him by Shawn Woodson while they shared a cell at the Baltimore City jail on October 22 and 23, 1989.
Notwithstanding that this is a criminal prosecution, indeed a capital punishment case, the standard of proof for the admissibility of evidence is one of preponderance, not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Bourjaily v. United States, 483 U.S. 171, 175-76, 107 S.Ct. 2775, 2778-79, 97 L.Ed.2d 144, 152 (1987); State v. Jones, 311 Md. 23, 33, 532 A.2d 169, 174 (1987). The preliminary fact in question, upon which relevance and therefore admissibility turns, is whether the defendant was the person who made admissions to Andre Spells on October 22 and 23, 1989. The proper test, then, is whether the evidence was sufficient to allow the jury to conclude that it was more likely than not that the defendant was the man who spoke to Spells on those occasions.
Spells’s testimony that the incriminating statements were made by his cellmate who introduced himself as “Shawn Woodson,” used the nickname “Buddy,” and who was suffering at the time from a mid-body injury provided a sufficient basis for the admission of those oral admissions despite Spells’s inability to identify Woodson at trial. Bowers v. State, 298 Md. 115, 468 A.2d 101 (1983) appeal after remand, 306 Md. 120, 507 A.2d 1072 (1986), cert. denied, Bowers v. Maryland, 479 U.S. 890, 107 S.Ct. 292, 93 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986), post-conviction proceeding, Bowers v. State, 320 Md. 416, 578 A.2d 734 (1990). In Bowers the defendant, after his arrest, gave a statement to the police wherein he related that he and one Alexander Peterson raped the victim and thereafter Peterson strangled the victim to death. The defendant described Peterson as a fugitive who was “on the run from Chicago.” At trial, over the objections of the defendant, the State introduced records showing that on the date of the offense in question an Alexander Peterson was incarcerated at the Pontiac Correctional Center in Illinois.
We rejected Bowers contention that the trial court had erred in admitting the evidence that someone named Alex*270ander Peterson was incarcerated at the time of the murder.
We reasoned:
“1 Wharton’s Criminal Evidence § 103 (C. Torcia 13th ed. 1972) states:
“ ‘Identical names give rise to a presumption of identity of person. This presumption is slight when the name is common and there are many persons having the same name. It increases in strength with circumstances indicating the improbability of there being two persons of the same name at the same time and place, and where there is no evidence that there is any other person bearing that name. Identity, then, can be presumed from names coupled with other circumstances. There is some case law to the effect that the identity of names alone gives rise to a rebuttable presumption of identity of person.’ Id. at 180. This same passage was cited with approval in Murphy v. State, 47 Md.App. 387, 422 A.2d 1297 (1980), cert. denied, 289 Md. 738 (1981), and Sallie v. State, 24 Md.App. 468, 332 A.2d 316 (1975).
“By giving the police the name of Alexander Peterson who, Bowers said, was ‘on the run from Chicago,’ Bowers forced police to attempt to locate this alleged accomplice. When Peterson was located in an Illinois prison, a presumption of identity of persons arose. It then became the province of the jury to weigh the evidence in determining whether the Alexander Peterson who was located in Illinois was the same one referred to by Bowers. As stated in Thomas v. State, 32 Md.App. 465, 477, 361 A.2d 138 (1976), ‘[I]t is for the jury to pick and sift, to stress and ignore, to believe and disbelieve, to weigh and assess, and resolve the conflicts in reaching a final decision to acquit or convict.’ The surname of the alleged accomplice was not as common as Brown, Johnson, Jones, or Smith, nor was the given name as common as Charles, Henry, John, or William. The evidence was admissible. The jury simply chose to believe the State’s contention that the Alexander Peterson to whom Bowers referred was not involved in the commission of the crime in the *271case at bar. Bowers was not denied the opportunity to offer contrary evidence to disprove the State’s assertion or to argue in closing that the Alexander Peterson presented by the State was not the same Alexander Peterson to whom Bowers referred.”
Id. 298 Md. at 130-31, 468 A.2d at 109.
The Court of Special Appeals applied the same principle in Murphy, supra, 47 Md.App. at 389, 422 A.2d at 1297-98, cert. denied, 289 Md. 738 (1981) (evidence of Motor Vehicle Administration driving record in name of Raymond Arvil Murphy was sufficient to convict Raymond Arvil Murphy charged with driving an automobile while his license was suspended or revoked), and in Sallie, supra, 24 Md.App. at 482, 332 A.2d at 324 (where eye witnesses at trial identified criminal agent only by nickname, evidence from other witnesses that defendant on trial was person known to use that nickname was sufficient to establish his criminal agency).
In the instant case, the given name and surname of Shawn Woodson hardly can be considered common. That fact coupled with the evidence that Spells knew Woodson’s nickname and observed the mid-body injury he had suffered in the incident on October 10, 1989, provided ample circumstantial support for the admission of his extra-judicial identification of Woodson as the declarant of the incriminating admissions.1
Moreover, the permissible inference from that extra-judicial identification was not dissipated by the inability of Spells to identify Woodson at trial. Rather, it was for the jury to determine the weight to be accorded that inference in light of Spells’s inability (or unwillingness) to identify Woodson at trial. Cf. Bedford v. State, 293 Md. 172, 443 *272A.2d 78 (1982) (extra-judicial identification of defendant by victims from photographic array was sufficient evidence of criminal agency notwithstanding inability of victims to identify defendant at trial); See also Lynn McLain, Maryland Evidence, § 303.4 n. 18 at 253 (1987).
Judges RODOWSKY and McAULIFFE have authorized me to state that they join in the views expressed herein.

. The defense was aware through discovery proceedings of Woodson’s alleged admissions to Spells as early as January 26, 1990, when Woodson moved to suppress those statements on the ground that Spells was acting as a State agent while he shared a cell with Woodson at Baltimore City jail. After hearing testimony from Detective Vernon Holly, the principal investigating officer for the Baltimore City Police Department, and from Spells, the court denied that motion.