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229 Md. 459

184 A.2d 738

Whyte v. State

Court of Appeals of Maryland

Decided October 16, 1962

Court of Appeals of Maryland · decided 1962-10-16

Relies on United States v. E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. · Wright v. State · Ferraro v. State

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1962-10-16

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently April 1992

12 state decisions

801962197019801990decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Per Curiam.

¶1 Ignatius N. Whyte was convicted by a jury of the possession and control of narcotics. On appeal he claims insufficiency of the evidence and entrapment by the police. Both contentions are without merit.

¶2 A member of the narcotics squad, having searched a “special employee” (known as “Dukey”) and finding no money or narcotics in his possession, gave him money with which to *460 make a purchase. The officer, in plain clothes, while following the special employee and defendant, saw the employee give the defendant money and saw the defendant walk into a school yard, leaving the employee in the street. After the lapse of about a minute, the defendant returned and gave “something” to the employee, who, in turn, gave a package, containing two capsules of heroin, to the officer. The officer again searched the employee and found neither narcotics nor money. The defendant was arrested approximately sixty days later in a series of arrests along with other suspected offenders. The State introduced the testimony of the “undercover” officer and the captain of the narcotics squad, but'the special employee was not called to testify. The motions of the defendant for a judgment of acquittal on the possession and control counts in the indictment were overruled.

¶3 It was not essential to the prosecution that it call the special employee as a state witness. And since there was legally sufficient evidence from which the jury could find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, the verdict will not be set aside. Wright v. State, 222 Md. 242.

¶4 The complaint with respect to entrapment was groundless. The issue was submitted to the jury on proper instructions and it found against the defendant. Baxter v. State, 223 Md. 495, cert. den. 366 U. S. 968. See also Ferraro v. State, 200 Md. 274.

¶5 Judgment affirmed.

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