Opinion ID: 2189241
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: introduction

Text: On Sunday morning, September 16, 2001, David Triggs (hereinafter Petitioner) made the first of dozens [1] of calls to his ex-wife, Pamela Triggs (hereinafter Mrs. Triggs), who lived in Montgomery County, in violation of a protective order prohibiting him from having any contact with her. When he made many of the calls, which continued over a four-day period, Petitioner threatened to rape and murder his ex-wife and murder their three children, who were with him during a scheduled visitation when he called. Petitioner and Mrs. Triggs were married for almost seven and a half years when they divorced on March 1, 2002. They had three children together, who were eight, six, and four at the time of their divorce. Petitioner's four-day reign of terror, as Judge Ann S. Harrington, Circuit Court for Montgomery County, called it, was the culmination of a long history of a troubled relationship filled with domestic abuse. In her victim impact statement, Mrs. Triggs described some of Petitioner's controlling and abusive behavior that occurred over the course of their marriage and during the period at issue during this case. According to Mrs. Triggs, Petitioner, in the past, had held electric hedge clippers to her throat, pointed a gun to her head, fired a gun at her, and raped her four times. In 1996, she obtained her first protective order after Petitioner shot at her. When Mrs. Triggs attempted to leave her husband, Petitioner harassed her friends who were helping her, causing them to get peace orders against him. Petitioner also harassed Mrs. Triggs at work and threatened to kill her co-workers, which resulted in her place of work closing for two days and hiring security for three weeks. Mrs. Triggs claims she lost [her] job because of him. In addition, the couple lost their home and Mrs. Triggs's credit record was ruined when Petitioner refused to sign the papers to sell their home, telling the realtor he preferred to have the home foreclosed so as to destroy Mrs. Triggs. Mrs. Triggs also described how Petitioner verbally abused her and attempted to control her every move and thought. He dictated the types of clothes she could wear (no sweatpants or baggy clothes allowed), taped her telephone calls, removed her car radio, and disabled her car on several occasions. During the month before they separated, he would wake her up every time she fell asleep, allowing only one hour a night. After they separated, Mrs. Triggs related how Petitioner would tell the children to tell mommy her cement shoes are coming, tell mommy I am going to cut her head off, tell mommy she doesn't have long to live, and tell mommy I'm watching. On September 26, 2000, Mrs. Triggs obtained her second order of protection from the District Court of Maryland sitting in Montgomery County. She stated she was afraid for her life because her husband had shot at her in the past and sought the order because he wanted her to get an apartment and prostitute herself to support the family and threatened to burn her like a witch on a stick if she did not comply. The court issued an order, effective for one year, requiring Petitioner to refrain from threatening or abusing Mrs. Triggs and to begin counseling immediately. On March 28, 2001, the court amended the September 26 protective order pursuant to Mrs. Triggs's emergency motion to modify the order, ordering, among other things, that Petitioner have no contact with Mrs. Triggs, that he could not take the children out of the state or out of school if it was not his scheduled time, and that he must abide by a two-week visitation schedule requiring him to pick up his children from school on Friday and drop them off at school on Monday. One month later, in April 2001, Petitioner violated the protective order by banging on Mrs. Triggs's door in the middle of the night. Mrs. Triggs called the police, who arrested Petitioner when he tried to flee the apartment complex in his car. While he was in jail awaiting trial, Petitioner sent numerous letters to his children containing disturbing references to Mrs. Triggs and their marriage. Mrs. Triggs filed a complaint about the letters with the police commissioner because she feared for her and her children's personal safety. On July 23, 2001, Petitioner was convicted for violating the March 28 amended protective order. He was sentenced to 90 days in the Montgomery County Detention Center, with 36 days suspended and credit for 54 days, and one year of supervised probation. He was ordered, again, to have no contact with Mrs. Triggs. In mid-September 2001, a bench warrant was issued from the Circuit Court for Petitioner's arrest because Petitioner was telling his children that he wanted to put his wife in cement shoes. Because of a technical problem with the warrant, however, the Sheriff's Office for Montgomery County could not arrest Petitioner before he picked up his children on September 14, 2001, for his scheduled two-week visitation. On September 16, 2001, at approximately 11:45 on Sunday morning, Petitioner made the first of more than fifty calls occurring over a four-day period to Mrs. Triggs. [2] Petitioner called Mrs. Triggs while she was at home alone in her apartment in Gaithersburg. After Mrs. Triggs reminded Petitioner that he should not be calling her because of the protective order, he said, I don't give a fuck about a piece of paper, are you going to talk to me, you need to talk to me. When she did not respond, he continued saying, God dammit, Pamela, these children are dead by the end of this weekend. I don't want them, I want you, but I will kill them. Mrs. Triggs hung up and called the police immediately. Three Gaithersburg police officers arrived at Mrs. Triggs's house in response to her call. While she waited for the police, the phone rang about six times with the Caller-ID showing Petitioner's name and number. When the police arrived, she handed her phone to Officer Chris Vance, who listened to the messages that Petitioner had left. Officer Vance testified that the messages contained threats that if she [didn't] call him back, he [would] kill the kids. After being advised by the police that it was not safe for her to remain at home, Mrs. Triggs went to a friend's house. Officer Vance subsequently requested a warrant for Petitioner's arrest, which was issued late that afternoon. Petitioner continued to call Mrs. Triggs's phone and leave messages, making a total of fourteen calls that day. On Monday morning, September 17, 2001, Mrs. Triggs met with the Fugitive Division of the Sheriff's Office to assist them in their efforts to find Petitioner. Petitioner made four calls to Mrs. Triggs on Monday. On Tuesday, September 18, 2001, Petitioner made a total of twelve calls to Mrs. Triggs. At one point, he claimed he was giving one of their sons Ambient, a sleeping pill. He also asked Mrs. Triggs, who is a nurse, what does it mean when your respirations only get to one ... when your breathing, respirations are only one a minute. He also threatened to break [the children's] arms and their legs and then their neck. In another recorded call, he stated, In about two hours I'm going to call you with an interstate number or an exit number off of 270 where I'm going to leave something for you, or somebody. In yet another recorded call, he told her that she was down by one child and that will leave only two. He also told her that he was getting a very itchy trigger finger. In still yet another recorded call, he said Unfortunately, I don't care what [the] court orders, what laws or whatever you've got. It makes no difference to me ... I'm either going to be dead or in jail, and that's fine with me. At approximately nine or ten at night on September 18, while several sheriff's deputies waited with Mrs. Triggs at her home, Petitioner called and demanded that she meet him at a designated location. Petitioner said that Mrs. Triggs had to jump through hoops of fire to get to [her] kids and [her] first hoop was going to be this place, Good Time Auto. He told her to be at the auto shop by 11:00 p.m. Mrs. Triggs decided to meet him as he requested as part of a plan with the Sheriff's Office to locate Petitioner and the children. Mrs. Triggs, however, did not meet Petitioner at the auto shop because the officers decided it was unsafe for her to do so because the buildings were dark and there were two men standing outside. When she did not meet him there, he called again, after midnight. When Mrs. Triggs told Petitioner she was afraid of meeting him, he said, I'm not going to kill you yet. Petitioner then told Mrs. Triggs that, waiting for her at Good Time Auto, were four men ... and they are there to rape you while I listen on the other phone to you scream. Mrs. Triggs then testified: He said that he was going to beat me, and he was going to torture me, and then he was going to rape me and then he would kill me, and then he was going to shove his cock in my mouth. And he said that if I didn't do it, he said I would never see my children while I was alive, he kept telling me, Make no bones about it, you are dead tonight, you will die tonight, it's up to you whether or not you see your children before you do. Petitioner then called again, telling Mrs. Triggs that he still wanted her to go to Good Time Auto. When she told him that she was in a safe place, Petitioner became very upset and his voice went flat. He then said, Well, now you need to pick one. Pick one child to die, it is time for another one to die, you need to pick one. Mrs. Triggs, who now was being encouraged by the deputies to continue talking with Petitioner because they had been able to trace his cell phone to Ocean City, said that she could not pick a child and tried to get him to talk about other things. Mrs. Triggs testified: He kept saying, Oh, well, if you can't pick one, I will. And he got my daughter on the phone and she was kind of real sleepy, she is like, Mommy? And I am like, Hi, baby. And she is like, Mommy? And I am like, Are you okay? And he goes, Uh, uh, uh, say goodbye to mommy forever. And I heard her scream. Mrs. Triggs testified that she was so hysterical that she could not get back on the phone with Petitioner anymore. Petitioner called again, leaving a message. Sargent Maxwell Uy listened to the message and testified that Petitioner said, I hope you know a good orthopaedic surgeon. At this point, Petitioner had been located in Ocean City, and officers there were negotiating with him to try to get him to release the children. Petitioner was apprehended on September 19, 2001, and Mrs. Triggs's children were returned to her physically unharmed later that day. During the period of September 16 to September 19, while Petitioner was calling Mrs. Triggs, he also called and threatened his mother, grandmother, sisters, and nieces and nephews, who, because they lived near Ocean City, were escorted to the police department for their own safety. While he was in jail for the second time awaiting trial, Petitioner sent numerous letters to his children and to his sister that contained disturbing references about Mrs. Triggs. [3]
On October 18, 2001, Petitioner was indicted by the State on the following forty-three charges: one count of telephone misuse, [4] thirty counts of violating a protective order, [5] four counts of harassment, [6] and eight counts of telephone threats. [7] See supra note 2 for a chart of the calls that were charged. During a pre-trial hearing, Judge Harrington of the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, heard, among other things, Petitioner's motion to strike duplicitous counts. Petitioner argued that the telephone misuse charge and the harassment charges were the same and that the thirty counts of violating a protective order were duplicitous because they constituted a course of conduct instead of separate incidents. The court denied his motion, noting that the State in its assertion has some technical or record procedure to identify each and every call, there is a time when a connection occurs, there is a time when a connection disconnects.... If it constitutes a violation of law, regardless of how brief it is, if it can be verified and proven, so be it. Following a jury trial, Petitioner was convicted of thirty of the forty-three counts: one count of telephone misuse, four counts of harassment, seven counts of telephone threats, and eighteen counts of violating a protective order. At the sentencing hearing, conducted about two months after the trial, the court sentenced Petitioner to three-years imprisonment for the telephone misuse conviction, consecutive six month sentences for each of the harassment and telephone threat convictions, and consecutive one-year sentences totaling eighteen years for each violation of a protective order conviction. The sentences resulted in a term of imprisonment totaling twenty-six years and six months. When she imposed the sentence, Judge Harrington stated: It is ... extremely significant to me that these offenses occurred when you were already on probation for violating a protective order. There is evidence before me that you have said that you have no regard for any court order that the Court might put in place and no regard for any law that might be enacted because you are simply not going to adhere to it. I don't know how you got the information as to where Ms. Triggs was now located but I think it's apparent in letters you sent even after being convicted of these offenses, that you had that information and you were using your knowledge of it when everybody had gone to great lengths on the State's side to try to keep you from knowing that, to further torment her with your ability to control where she goes and what she does even when you are confined.... I think clearly there is an obsession there that nothing that the Court or the laws ... have been able to dislodge.... the concern for me in formulating a sentence in this case is really the aspect of protection, not rehabilitation, not general deterrence, but protection for the family involved in this particular case. In an unreported opinion, the Court of Special Appeals vacated the sentences for harassment and telephone threats and affirmed the eighteen convictions and sentences for violating a protective order. With respect to the harassment and telephone threats, the court concluded that Petitioner was punished for the same conduct under Section 32-19A of the Montgomery County Code, regarding harassment, and Section 555A of Article 27 of the Maryland Code, regarding telephone threats. Applying Miles v. State, 349 Md. 215, 707 A.2d 841 (1998), the intermediate appellate court determined that the sentences for harassment and telephone threats merged under the rule of lenity because the county ordinance did not clearly indicate an intent of cumulative punishment when the conduct also violated another statute. [8] With respect to the eighteen counts of violating a protective order, the Court of Special Appeals observed that Section 4-509 of the Family Law Article provides penalties for each offense of violating a protective order. Because each call constituted a separate `offense,' the court affirmed Petitioner's eighteen convictions for violating a protective order. We granted Petitioner's petition for a writ of certiorari, Triggs v. State, 379 Md. 225, 841 A.2d 340 (2004), which presented the following question for our review: Where Petitioner was convicted of harassing and threatening his wife, by telephone, over a period of two days, was it error to impose separate, one-year, consecutive sentences as to each of eighteen convictions under the Family Law statute? Although Petitioner frames his question in terms of the multiple sentences only and does not address the multiple offenses and convictions, he maintained at oral argument, and the State likewise conceded this point, that his argument necessarily implicates what we have called the unit of prosecution, which arises in the context of determining whether the charging of multiple offenses is appropriate. Our focus in this opinion, thus, is the unit of prosecution the General Assembly intended in order to trigger the penalty provisions for violating a protective order. When a protective order requires an abuser to have no contact with a victim, we conclude that repeated calls constitute separate acts and therefore separate offenses for the purposes of the sentencing provisions requiring penalties for each offense in Section 4-509 of the Family Law Article.