Opinion ID: 2264131
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Procedural Defenses

Text: The State's position that the appeal is untimely mirrors the view of the Circuit Court, expressed in its March 29, 2005 ruling, that the validity of the preponderance of evidence standard used in the balancing process was resolved in the court's July 18, 2003 order, and that it is therefore too late to appeal that ruling. There is no doubt that both the State and the court believed that to be the case, that the July, 2003 order did, indeed, resolve all issues then pending before the court, including the Apprendi/Ring issue. Unfortunately, the record itself is at least ambiguous in that regard. There were two separate motions to correct illegal sentence pending before the court, one dealing with the alleged ex post facto effect of the 1983 statute removing intoxication as a statutory categorical mitigating circumstance and the other with the validity of the preponderance standard in the balancing process. Whatever the court may have intended, its memorandum addressed only the ex post facto issue and its order speaks to the denial of only one motion, not two. The docket entry is consistent: Order of Court that the Defendant's Motion [not Motions] to Correct Illegal Sentence is [not are ] hereby Denied. Such a record could easily have misled Evans into reasonably believing that the separate motion raising the Apprendi issue remained pending and that no appeal on that issue was then possible. If the court intended to deny both motions, it should have made that intent clear in its July, 2003 order, so that the Clerk could have made that intent manifest on the docket. On the state of this record, we hold that the motion raising the Apprendi/Ring issue was not resolved in July, 2003, that it remained pending until denied, as being without merit, in the March 29, 2005 order, and that the first issue raised in this appeal is therefore properly before us. The State also points out that, notwithstanding the Circuit Court's belief that Evans's claim that the indictment was deficient had not previously been raised or adjudicated, that claim had, in fact, been raised and decided when the Circuit Court denied his April, 2001 motion to reopen the 1995 post conviction proceeding, a ruling that, in denying his application for leave to appeal, we left undisturbed. See Evans v. State, supra , Misc. No. 10, Sept. Term 2001 (Order). The State is correct, to a point. The issue raised in that motion was based only on Apprendi. Ring had not yet been decided. The claim here is based primarily on Ring. Ring was not just a confirmation of Apprendi. It focused entirely on capital punishment schemes, which the Apprendi Court had indicated it was not addressing, and put a new gloss on the procedure for resolving principalship and aggravating factor issues. Although the general issue was the same, Ring added a significantly new dimension to it that could not have been adequately addressed under just Apprendi. Compare Borchardt v. State, supra, 367 Md. 91, 786 A.2d 631, with Oken v. State, supra, 378 Md. 179, 835 A.2d 1105. We acknowledge the State's argument, based on Schriro v. Summerlin, 542 U.S. 348, 124 S.Ct. 2519, 159 L.Ed.2d 442 (2004) and Hughes v. State, 901 So.2d 837 (Fla.2005), that Ring is not to be applied retroactively. We need not address that issue in this case, as we shall conclude that, even if Ring were applicable, it would provide no relief to Evans. As to Evans's complaint about the evidentiary standard used at the sentencing hearing, it is true, as the State contends, that Evans never raised that issue in the Circuit Court and has therefore failed to preserve it. In order to forestall the inevitable claim that his eminently competent and diligent attorneys rendered Constitutionally deficient performance in not raising that issue, however, we shall address it.