Opinion ID: 2336541
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Concurrent intent

Text: The Court of Special Appeals upheld Harrison's conviction of attempted murder because a specific intent to murder Cook could be inferred under the theory of concurrent intent. Harrison, 151 Md.App. at 662, 828 A.2d at 257. This theory emerged from the discussion in Ford v. State, 330 Md. 682, 625 A.2d 984 (1993), in which the Court expressed its disapproval of the use of transferred intent in cases where the defendant faced charges of attempted murder of a bystander. See LeEllen Coacher & Libby Gallo, Criminal Liability: Transferred and Concurrent Intent, 44 A.F.L.REV. 227, 235 (1998). The Ford Court discussed the doctrine of concurrent intent to explain[ ] and justif[y] the result in State v. Wilson, 313 Md. 600, 546 A.2d 1041 (1988), the case in which this Court held that transferred intent could be used to prove the specific-intent element of attempted murder of a bystander. Ford, 330 Md. at 716, 625 A.2d at 1000. Explaining the distinction between transferred intent and concurrent intent, Judge Chasanow for the Court stated: In transferred intent, the intended harm does not occur to the intended victim, but occurs instead to a second ... victim. The actual result is an unintended, unanticipated consequence of intended harm. For example, consider a defendant who shoots a single bullet at the head of A, standing with B and C. If the defendant misses A and instead kills B, the defendant's intent to murder A will be transferred to allow his conviction for B's murder. The intent is concurrent, on the other hand, when the nature and scope of the attack, while directed at a primary victim, are such that we can conclude the perpetrator intended to ensure harm to the primary victim by harming everyone in that victim's vicinity. Id. To further distinguish between the two theories, the Court offered a hypothetical example of the application of concurrent intent: [A]n assailant who places a bomb on a commercial airplane intending to harm a primary target on board ensures by this method of attack that all passengers will be killed. Similarly, consider a defendant who intends to kill A and, in order to ensure A's death, drives by a group consisting of A, B, and C, and attacks the group with automatic weapon fire or an explosive device devastating enough to kill everyone in the group .... When the defendant escalated his mode of attack from a single bullet aimed at A's head to a hail of bullets or an explosive device, the factfinder can infer that, whether or not the defendant succeeded in killing A, the defendant concurrently intended to kill everyone in A's immediate vicinity to ensure A's death. The defendant's intent need not be transferred from A to B, because although the defendant's goal was to kill A, his intent to kill B was also direct; it was concurrent with his intent to kill A. Id. at 716-17, 625 A.2d at 1000-01. The Court summed up the rule of concurrent intent as follows: Where the means employed to commit the crime against a primary victim create a zone of harm around that victim, the factfinder can reasonably infer that the defendant intended that harm to all who are in the anticipated zone. Id. at 717, 625 A.2d at 1001. [14] The Ford Court then turned its attention to the facts of Wilson, which, according to the Court, reached the right result but for the wrong reasons. Retroactively applying the theory of concurrent intent to the facts in Wilson, the Court stated that the jury could have found that the defendant in that case intended to create a kill zone by firing multiple bullets and that everyone in the path of the bullets were intended targets. Id. at 717-18, 625 A.2d at 1001. The Court concluded: [T]he bystander victim, was obviously in the ... direct line of fire and the evidence permitted finding concurrent intent to kill everyone in the path of the bullets. Id. at 718, 625 A.2d at 1001. [15] The doctrine of concurrent intent also has found favor in several other jurisdictions. For example, using concurrent intent, the Supreme Court of California, in People v. Bland, 28 Cal.4th 313, 121 Cal. Rptr.2d 546, 48 P.3d 1107 (2002), upheld attempted-murder convictions that arose out of a gang-related shooting resulting in the death of the intended victim and injury to two bystanders. Id. at 1120-21. Wilson, a member of the Rolling 20's Crips, was driving through a Long Beach neighborhood with two passengers when he encountered Bland and a friend, both members of the Insane Crips. Id. at 1110. Bland approached Wilson's car, began shooting into the vehicle, and, along with his friend, continued to shoot as the car started to drive away. Wilson died, and both of his passengers received non-fatal gunshot wounds. Id. During Bland's trial, the jury was instructed according to the doctrine of transferred intent, after which Bland was convicted of first-degree murder of Wilson and attempted first-degree murder of the two injured bystanders. Id. at 1110-11. The Supreme Court of California held that Bland's convictions for attempted murder could not be premised upon transferred intent because, in California, that theory did not apply to attempted murder. Id. at 1117. Nevertheless, the Court concluded that the convictions could rest upon the theory of concurrent intent. After quoting Ford at length, the California court stated the facts before it virtually compelled an inference that Bland harbored a specific intent to kill all those in harm's way: Even if the jury found that [Bland] primarily wanted to kill Wilson rather than Wilson's passengers, it could reasonably also have found a concurrent intent to kill those passengers when [Bland] and his cohort fired a flurry of bullets at the fleeing car and thereby created a kill zone. Such a finding fully supports attempted murder convictions as to the passengers. Id. at 1119. The court in Ruffin v. United States, 642 A.2d 1288, 1298 (D.C.1994) also applied a concurrent-intent analysis. In Ruffin, the defendant and four others fired multiple shots at an intended target, Younger. Id. at 1290. The shooting left Younger merely injured, but bullets also hit two bystanders, killing one and injuring the other. Id. at 1290. The defendant was convicted of three specific intent crimes, first-degree murder of the deceased bystander, Williams, and assault with intent to kill while armed on Younger and Walker, the injured bystander. Id. Holding that the assault-with-intent-to-kill conviction was sustainable under the doctrine of concurrent intent, the court declared that, by firing ten to fifteen shotsa hail of bulletsat his intended victim, Ruffin and his cohort possessed a concurrent intent to kill everyone in the path of the bullets, including the unintended victim who was in the direct line of fire. Id. at 1298 (quoting Ford, 330 Md. at 717-18, 625 A.2d at 1001). In United States v. Willis, 46 M.J. 258 (1997), the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces also used concurrent intent to uphold an attempted-murder conviction. Willis was facing charges of attempted murder of his wife, so he concocted an elaborate plan to kill her as well as his aunt, whom he learned planned to testify against him. Id. at 259. On the day of a hearing in the case against him, Willis first shot and killed his wife. He then went to the base legal office, where he found his aunt, his uncle, and Captain Hatch, the Chief of Military Justice. The uncle tried to hold the office door closed, but because Willis was trying to force his way inside, the office door remained open by six inches. When Willis saw Captain Hatch between the six-inch gap, Willis fired one shot at him but missed. Willis then reached around the door, aimed his pistol behind the door where his aunt and uncle were, and fired three random shots, intending to kill his aunt. Id. Willis pled guilty to attempting to murder the aunt, uncle, and Captain Hatch. On appeal, Willis challenged the plea of guilty to the attempted murder of the uncle, who was not his primary target. Id. The court, after explaining the doctrine of concurrent intent as discussed in Ford and Ruffin, stated that: Under a concurrent-intent approach, [the court] infer[s] the intent when the result was the same as that intended or at least a natural and probable consequence of the intended result. As long as the defendant has the requisite intent for the intended crime, the defendant will be responsible for the natural and probable consequences of the act. Id. at 261. The court held that Willis' actions were sufficient to establish that he had the concurrent intent to kill both his aunt and his uncle. Id. Willis created a kill zone by shooting behind the door in three different spots, moving his pistol randomly between the shots. Id. Therefore, according to the court, Willis was responsible for the natural and probable consequences of his act, including the death or grievous bodily harm of whoever was behind the door. Id. at 262. In concurrent-intent analyses, courts focus on the means employed to commit the crime and the zone of harm around [the] victim. Ford, 330 Md. at 717, 625 A.2d at 1001. The essential questions, therefore, become (1) whether a fact-finder could infer that the defendant intentionally escalated his mode of attack to such an extent that he or she created a zone of harm, and (2) whether the facts establish that the actual victim resided in that zone when he or she was injured. As to the first question, courts have permitted an inference that the defendant created a kill zone when a defendant, like Harrison, fired multiple bullets at an intended target. In Wilson, the defendant and his brother fired multiple bullets from two handguns. Ford, 330 Md. at 718, 625 A.2d at 1001 (discussing Wilson, 313 Md. at 601, 546 A.2d at 1042). The defendant in Bland fired a flurry of bullets, and in Ruffin, the defendant and his cohort fired ten or fifteen rounds, which the court described as a hail of bullets. Bland, 121 Cal.Rptr.2d 546, 48 P.3d at 1119; Ruffin, 642 A.2d at 1298; see also Hunt v. United States, 729 A.2d 322, 326 (D.C.1999) (holding that by unloading multiple `quick fire' shots to hit the target, the defendant created a kill zone that ensnared the bystander); Walls v. United States, 773 A.2d 424, 434 (D.C. 2001) (holding that evidence of the defendant firing several shots permitted a jury inference that the defendant created a zone of danger); People v. Smith, 9 Cal. Rptr.3d 387 (Cal.App.2004) (allowing an inference of concurrent intent to kill the intended victim and unintended victim where the defendant fired a single shot at a moving vehicle containing the target and a bystander in the line of fire). Just three random shots directed behind a door gave rise to a permissible inference of a killing zone in Willis, 46 M.J. at 261-62. These methods of attack are similar to Harrison's six shots at Valentine. We conclude, therefore, that the facts support an inference that Harrison created a kill zone around Valentine and that Harrison had the specific intent to kill everyone inside of the zone. The facts in this case, however, do not permit an inference that Cook, the unintended victim, inhabited the kill zone when Harrison's bullet hit him. Courts that have considered the issue all have relied on specific facts showing the location of the unintended victim either in relation to the intended victim or in relation to the defendant. In Bland, for example, the unintended victims occupied the same car as the intended victim when the defendant fired a hale of bullets at the car. Bland, 121 Cal.Rptr.2d 546, 48 P.3d at 1110. When, in Hunt, the defendant fired multiple quick fire shots inside the automobile in which the primary victim sat, the murdered bystander was standing right next to the car. 729 A.2d at 323. Also, in Willis, the court held that the unintended victim resided in the kill zone behind an office door where he and the intended victim tried to avoid the defendant's random gunshots. 46 M.J. at 261; see also Harvey, 111 Md.App. at 405, 434-35, 681 A.2d at 630, 645 (holding that, where the injured bystander was in close proximity to the intended target, the evidence was sufficient to permit a finding that [the bystander] was in [the] `kill zone'). The unintended victims in Ruffin occupied a car in the vicinity of the shooting and were in the defendant's direct line of fire. 642 A.2d at 1290, 1298. In the present case, however, the State's argument that Cook was in Harrison's kill zone at the time of the shooting lacks adequate support from the evidence. According to the agreed statement of facts, in the fifteen hundred block of Clifton Avenue, [Cook] was standing and talking with friends when he was struck in the neck with a bullet. Although this statement shows generally where Cook was standing when he was shot, it and the remaining evidence provide no indication where Cook was in relation to Valentine or Harrison. A fact finder, let alone an appellate court, has no idea, based on this meager evidence, whether Cook stood in Harrison's direct line of fire, next to the intended victim, or at a distance from Harrison or his target, Valentine. Absent more specific evidence of Cook's location in relation to the shooter and the intended victim, no inference is permissible that Cook occupied the kill zone when he was struck by the bullet. Consequently, we disagree with Court of Special Appeals and conclude that the agreed statement of facts does not provide sufficient evidence to support a finding of concurrent intent on the part of Harrison. This Court and the Court of Special Appeals have heretofore made clear that prosecutors risk acquittal when a not-guilty agreed statement of facts fails to support the legal theory upon which the State relies. See Bruno v. State, 332 Md. 673, 684, 632 A.2d 1192, 1197 (1993) (noting that the State risk[s] an acquittal by proceeding on a not-guilty agreed statement of facts that does not present sufficient evidence to support the crimes charged); Barnes v. State, 31 Md.App. 25, 28, 354 A.2d 499, 501 (1976) (stating that, even in a case based on an agreed statement of facts, an accused must be acquitted if the evidence is not legally sufficient to sustain his conviction). We renew that admonition today. If a prosecutor proceeds on a not-guilty agreed statement of facts, he or she should take care to assure that the statement contains evidence to support each element of the crime or crimes charged, or else acquittal necessarily will follow.