Bethea v. State

On May 9, 1974 John William Bethea came to trial in the Criminal Court of Baltimore charged with armed robbery and related offenses allegedly committed on August 18, 1973. He previously had been acquitted of entirely unrelated offenses allegedly committed on the same date.

At the earlier, unrelated trial of the appellant for those other offenses, certain records of the American Ice Company had been admitted in evidence and two of its employees, a Mr. Williams and a Mr. Phillips, had testified. It is plain from the record that those records and the testimony of the witnesses had tended to…