Opinion ID: 2316899
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Alternatively, the State opines:

Text: even if the exception is held to apply to weapons carried openly, a knife that is capable of being folded but that is, in fact, carried with its blade locked open should not be deemed a penknife for the purposes of Section 36(a). At the close of all the evidence (the defense did not offer evidence), Bacon moved for a judgment of acquittal. Md. Rule 4-324. We gather from the argument of counsel that both the prosecution and the defense were satisfied that the buck knife qualified as a penknife when the blade was folded into the handle. Their ways parted, however, upon the State's suggestion that when the blade was opened and locked, the knife lost its identity as a penknife and, therefore, its statutory exception. The trial court asked the prosecutor, You are saying that the legal character of the knife can vary according to the circumstance? The prosecutor said, Yes. The trial judge accepted this notion: I have to agree with [the prosecutor] that what would be a perfectly legal knife, folded up knife in the pocket, can become a weapon carried openly with intent to harm, and that's about the circumstances, and it has to come about what the jury understands the circumstances to be, and I will deny the motion. The judge erred. The Court of Special Appeals was seduced by the erroneous reasoning of the trial judge. It held that the trial court did not err in finding the knife to be outside the statutory exception. The intermediate appellate court explained: The circumstances of [Bacon's] withdrawing what would otherwise qualify as a penknife without switchblade from his pocket with the blade in an open position served to take the knife out of the statutory exception. In that open state, it was no longer a penknife. At the point [Bacon] withdrew the knife, it carried all the dangerous propensities that the weapons listed in Art. 27, § 36(a) have in common. Bacon v. State, 82 Md. App. at 742-743, 573 A.2d 114. The court's reasoning was not perficient. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, A penknife is a penknife is a penknife is a penknife. [6] The only qualification of penknife in the statute is that it be without switchblade. [7] On the face of the statute, there is no indication contradicting the view that a penknife is a penknife whether small or large, whether the blade is closed or open, whether the blade is locked open or unlocked, whether it is carried concealed or openly. Its character is not changed by being carried openly with the blade unfolded; its dangerous propensity is merely more easily realized. As we have seen from the history of the statute, for over a hundred years the Legislature has evinced an intent, despite the exception being before it on several occasions, that wearing or carrying a penknife, concealed or openly, was not criminal, with the sole qualification, in all that time, that the penknife not be a switchblade knife. We call attention to the fact that Mackall v. State, 283 Md. 100, 387 A.2d 762, was decided 13 July 1978. The General Assembly has had a dozen opportunities to correct our view of a penknife if it believed that our view was contrary to the legislative intent. Penal statutes, as a general rule, are strictly construed, Jones v. State, 304 Md. 216, 220, 498 A.2d 622 (1985), by which is meant that courts will not extend the punishment to cases not plainly within the language used, State v. Archer, 73 Md. 44, 57, 20 A. 172 (1890). Davis v. State, 319 Md. 56, 61, 570 A.2d 855 (1990). See Briggs v. State, 289 Md. 23, 31-32, 421 A.2d 1369 (1980); State v. Fabritz, 276 Md. 416, 422, 348 A.2d 275 (1975), cert. denied, 425 U.S. 942, 96 S.Ct. 1680, 48 L.Ed.2d 185 (1976). The acceptance of the view of the trial court and the Court of Special Appeals and endorsed by the State would offend the firmly established principles of statutory construction which we have recited and applied many times. We cannot deny that the view the State implores us to follow may be desirable and in the public interest. But to reach such an interpretation in the face of the language of the statute, we would have to doff our judicial robes and don a legislative hat. Our function, applying the principles of statutory construction, is to interpret statutes, not to enact them. We cannot read statutes to say what we would prefer them to say; we can only apply them in accord with what they do say. The short of it is that we are simply without authority to hold that the Legislature intended that a penknife without switchblade is without the exception when it is carried openly with the blade unfolded. The Legislature is, of course, free to say so, if it wishes, but we may not say so under the guise of statutory construction.