delivered the opinion of the court.
Andrеw Bead Myers and Herbert Myersi were convicted in the Criminal Court of Baltimore City of having and re *484 ceiving an automobile knowing tlie1 same1 to have been feloniously stolen, and they were both sentenced to be imprisoned in the Maryland penitentiary for ten years. From that judgment this: appeаl was taken.
The specific crime with which the appellants were charged was the larceny and subsequent disposal of an automobile belonging to Samuel W. Mays of New York, and the facts of the case may be briefly stated. The appellants are: brothers and had been connected with the operation, hiring, and barter of automobiles for a number of years. They do not appear to have operated jointly and had no established place of business. On September 5th, 1919, Herbert Myers sold E. H. Stevens, an automobile dealer, an automobile which had bеen stolen, on September 2nd, 1919, from Samuel W. .Mays, at 131 Riverside Drive, New York. Mays testified that Andrew Reid Myers actually stole the car, that he saw him drive it off, but could not stop him.
Sixteen of the seventeen exceptions relate to rulings of the lower court on questions of evidence, while the seventeenth is to the court’s action in overruling a motion in arrest of the judgment.
Two days after the jury had returned its verdict, the appellants filed two motions which were identical in form and substance, except that one was called a “motion for a new trial,” and the other a “motion in arrest of judgment,” and they were filed in the order in which they have been named. Both motions were overruled, and to the action of the court in overruling the motion in arrest of judgment (which the reporter will set out in the report of this case) an exception was reserved, and the principal question presented by the appeal is raised by the arguments of appellants’ counsel in connection with this exception.
Tersely stated, their contention is that there was no evidence in the case legally sufficient to show that the appellants had committed the offense dеscribed in tire indictment, and therefore the verdict of “guilty” returned by the jury was
*485
illegal and no judgment should have been entered up on it, and the oral and written arguments in connection with this exception were mainly addressed to the legal sufficiency of the evidence to warrant a convictiоn under the indictment in the case. If the question of the guilt or innocence of the appellants were before us for determination, or if we were free to consider the legal effect of the evidence in connection with any ruling of the court made during1 the trial of the case, thеse arguments would have great force, but under the long settled law1 of this State such questions as. these were exclusively for the jury which tried the ease, and their findings in regard to them cannot bej reviewed in this. Court. Passing for the time the manner in which the proposition is presented, it may be siaid that whatever the law may be elsewhere, under the Constitution of this State, and the decisions of this Court construing it, juries in criminal cases are “judges of law, as well as of fact,” and while this provision of our law has often been the subject of frequent, widespread, and often unfavorable, criticism and comment, it has nevertheless remained unchanged for nearly seventy years as a part of our organic law, and it is not within the power of this Court to amend it. This provision first occurs in the Constitution of 1851 and has frequently been passed upon by this Court. It was first construed in tho case of
Franklin
v. State,
It would be useless to further prolong this opinion by the citation of authority in support of a proposition about which there can be no possible doubt, and that is that, in this State, juries in criminal cases are finally and exclusively the judges of the law as well as the facts in cases tried before them, and that the only remedy for any mistake or error in the exercise of such power, or for any abuse of it, is by an application to the proper tribunal for a new trial.
There was a motion for a new trial in this case, which was overruled by the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City, and while that ruling is not before us on this appeal, it appeаrs in the record, and is referred to because it was based upon the same grounds as the motion in arrest of judgment which we are now considering. This motion, although described as a “motion in arrest of judgment,” is really the ordinary motion for a new trial, applied to new and strange endsi, and is apрarently intended to operate, in some way not clearly apparent, as a demurrer to the evidence.
It is well settled that no appeal lies from the action of the court in overruling a motion for a new trial
(Miller
v.
State,
The motion, although called a “motion in arrest of judgment,” possesses none of the incidents or characteristics of such a motion. A motion in arrest of judgment “lies only for defects and errors apparent upon the face of thei record.”
Archer
v.
State,
The record contains sixteen exceptions- to the ruling® of the court upon question of evidence, of which six, the seventh, tenth, eleventh, thirteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth were pressed in this Court, and these exceptions we will now consider. Samuel W. Mays testified that he was tire owner of the aaito-mobile said to have been stolen, and that, when he last saw it, it was being driven away from his residence in New York by Andrew Reid Myers, one of the appellants. There were two- objections to so much of this testimony as referred to Myers, one made- before it was given, and the other at its conclusion. These objections are the- subject of the seventh and tenth exceptions-. It was clearly proper for the witness to- prove his ownership- of the car and to- describe its appearance- when, he last saw it, and to> tell wherе that was, and the circumstances under which he lost it. These were naturally matters about which the jury should have been informed, and there is no apparent reason why this testimony should not have been admitted. That it alone did not prove the crime- charged in the indictment, or, that a. misleading inferеnce might have been drawn from the statement that Myers took the car away, did not affect the- relevancy of the testimony, but- the jury were -entitled to consider it in *489 connection with other testimony in the ease, and such authorities and arguments as the appellants' may have submitted in connection with it, and we find no error in these rulings. Nor was there any error1 in the ruling involved in the eleventh exception. The witness had already testified without objection to some memoranda he had made of the numbers., and other identification marks on the automobile, and had testified that he had madе them the “week of September 8th.” Counsel for the traversers then announced he would object to the memorandum if offered in evidence. The court thereupon asked the witness: “Did you take it off or make it right at the timei'” To which lie answered: “Yes.” “To which question and answer the defendants’ attorney objected, but the court overruled the objection,” and this is the subject of the eleventh exception. The exception was not to the admission of the memorandum, because it does not appear to have ever been offered in evidence, but to. the cоurt’s question. It. was both relevant and proper for the court to have been informed as to the time when the memoranda were made, because, the right of the witness to refer to them may have depended on that fact. Jones on Evidence, Sec. 874.
Andrew Eeid Myers having testified in chief as to his age and residencе, and as to his movements between the first and sixth of 'September and having further1 testified that, he had been convicted of the larceny of an automobile in Baltimore, but that he. owned the automobile and was not guilty of the crime of which he was convicted, further testified on cross-examinatiоn that he had a bill of sale for the automobile, sworn to. in the office of L. M. Limp on Gay Street, which wasi destroyed by the detective. He added that he was not sure whether the bill of sale was executed at 733 N. Gay Street, or whether ’it was at the office of the Commercial Guarantee Cоmpany, and was. then asked: “Don’t you know that Mr. Pumphrey testified in your ciase, on the 15th of March, that he took an acknowledgment from you, and that that bill of sale was executed by him, and that he was man *490 ager of the Commercial Guarantee Company at 733 N. Gay Street, the same placе where this bill of sale was executed which you are offering in this case today?” This question was allowed over the appellants’ objection. This ruling is the subject of the thirteenth exception. The state in rebuttal was permitted, over the objection of the appellants, to ask Lawrеnce King, a defective, the following question: “Under crossi-examination Andrew Beid Myers was asked in reference to a bill of sale executed at 732 N. Gay Street, and he said he didn’t know wheflier that was the number or not. What have you to say to that?” ED. Warren Shank, also a detective, was asked what was intended to be the same question, and they both answered that Myers had testified in another ease that the bill of sale was executed at 732 N. Gay Street. These rulings are covered by the fifteenth and sixteenth exceptions.
There was technical error in permitting the question Involved in the thirteenth exception to be asked, because the witness could not be impeached by showing that other persons, although they were his witnesses, had made statements at variance with his own, but the error was harmless and could not have injured the appellants, because it does nut aрpear from the record that the witness ever answered the question or in any way admitted that Pumphrey had so testified. Nor was there reversible error in admitting] the testimony involved in the fifteenth and sixteenth exceptions? This testimony was designed not so much to impeach the witness as to show an admission on his part of facts relevant to the issues in the case. The witness had not denied the facts when asked about them, but said that he was unable to recall them, and under stich circumstances it was permissible to prove that on a prior occasion he had admitted them.
The other exceptions to the evidence were no<t pressed and an examination of them fails to disclose any reversible error, and for the reasons stated the judgment will be afiirmed.
Judgment affirmed.