DeToro v. State

After his conviction of murder in the first degree by the court below (sitting without a jury), denial of a new trial by the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City, and sentence of death by administration of lethal gas, Percy DeToro appealed on the ground that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the verdict.

Sometime after midnight the appellant awakened Beatrice, the woman with whom he was living in an apartment, and began “nagging and fussing” with her. He declared “he was going to hit her in the head with an axe,” although he almost immediately thereafter claimed to have used the words in…