Court Opinion

ID: 9757442
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 22:40:53.725319+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:39.410465
License: Public Domain

O’Donnell, J.,

dissenting:

Although I agree that the conduct of the 20-year old mother, Virginia Fabritz, toward her three-and-one-half-year-old daughter, was reprehensible, and that as a result of her attempt to treat the child with “home remedies,” and her failure to more promptly seek medical attention, “Windy’s condition was permitted to steadily deteriorate until the child’s ordeal was ended by death,” I cannot concur with the majority in finding her conduct to be within the proscription of Maryland Code (1957, 1971 Repl. Vol. [1975 Cum. Supp.]) Art. 27, § 35A (a). I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals in Fabritz v. State, 24 Md. App. 708, 332 A. 2d 324 (1975).
I fear that my distinguished colleagues may have been swayed by the photographic exhibits, which they describe as “painfully demonstrating” the multiple bruises Windy bore as a result of a “vicious assault,” and which they find “too graphically illustrated the suffering to which Windy was subjected by Virginia’s failure to provide the treatment *427needed to save the child’s life.” It is a case such as this as brings forth the cogent observation of Wolfe, B., in Winterbottom v. Wright, 10 M. & W. 116 (1842) where he noted “hard cases, it has been frequently observed, are apt to introduce bad law.” 1
Art. 72, § 1 of the Code (1957, 1970 Repl. Vol. [1975 Cum. Supp.]) places upon a parent the duty to provide “support, care, nurture, welfare and education,” for a child under eighteen years of age. Pursuant to this section, it is incumbent upon a parent to provide medical attention, when necessary, to a minor child, although the statute itself does not in specific terms mention “medical care.”
The unintentional killing of another by the omission, through gross negligence, to perform a legal duty owing to him, was involuntary manslaughter at common law. See Clark & Marshall, “Law of Crimes,” § 10.12 (6th ed. 1958). See also R. Perkins, “Criminal Law,” Ch. 2, § 1 (1969), at pp. 71-73. This principle has been well recognized in this state in both Palmer v. State, 223 Md. 341, 164 A. 2d 467 (1960), and Craig v. State, 220 Md. 590, 155 A. 2d 684 (1959).
In Craig, Judge Prescott, writing for our predecessors, stated:
“[I]t is almost universally recognized that where the defendant owed to a deceased person a specific legal duty, but failed to perform the same, and death resulted to the deceased because of the non-performance of the duty, (at least under circumstances where the failure to perform constituted gross and wanton negligence) the defendant is guilty of involuntary manslaughter. 1 Warren, Homicide, Sec. 122, states the principle rather succinctly, as follows:
‘Where the defendant owed the deceased a legal or contractual duty, any omission of the duty *428resulting in the death of the deceased renders the defendant chargeable with manslaughter. The duty must have been a plain one which he was bound by law or contract to perform personally. A criminal intent is not a necessary element of the offense. The breach of duty need not have been a criminal offense.
* * *
‘The defendant is guilty of manslaughter where he neglected to provide his wife with necessaries or with medical attention, or an infant in his charge with medical attention; * * * ’ ” [citations omitted]. 220 Md. at 596, 155 A.2d at 688.
Where however “the basis of the charge be felonious negligence ... it must [be shown to] have been gross or criminal negligence.” Neusbaum v. State, 156 Md. 149, 162, 143 A. 872, 877 (1928); “gross or criminal negligence” has been interpreted by this Court to mean “a wanton or reckless disregard for human life.” Craig v. State, supra, at 597, 155 A. 2d at 688, citing Hughes v. State, 198 Md. 424, 84 A. 2d 419 (1951); Thomas v. State, 206 Md. 49, 109 A. 2d 909 (1954); Clay v. State, 211 Md. 577, 128 A. 2d 634 (1957).
Convictions for involuntary manslaughter of a husband and wife were reversed by our predecessors in Craig v. State, supra. There, the parents, because of their religious beliefs, treated their six-month-old child at home, “constantly and tenderly,” without medical intervention, during an illness, later diagnosed as pneumonia, which proved to be fatal. Evidence at the trial was adduced however that prompt medical attention “may” have saved the child’s life. After observing that “parents are vested with a reasonable discretion in regard to when medical attention is needed for their children,” the Court stated:
“If we assume that ordinarily careful and prudent parents would have called in medical aid during the initial stages of the child’s illness, and, therefore, *429the defendants were guilty, at this time, of ordinary negligence in failing to call in a physician, we still find nothing in the testimony that would sustain a finding that during this early period of the child’s illness the parents displayed ‘a wanton or reckless disregard for’ the child’s life; and, if we assume that the seriousness of the child’s illness was easily discernible to them in the last two or three days of its life, so that their failure, at that time, to call in medical aid did constitute gross negligence, the record fails to disclose that this failure was the proximate cause of the child’s death,____” 220 Md. at 598, 155 A. 2d at 689.2
It is true that in Palmer v. State, supra, as the majority points out, there was no evidence that the mother of the child had inflicted any of the blows which were shown to be the direct and immediate cause of the child’s death. Upon the facts, to all intents, the appellant was shown to have been a principal in the second degree, since she permitted her paramour to inflict “prolonged and brutal beatings” upon her twenty-months’-old child. Although the Court concluded that this “gross or criminal negligence” on her part was a contributing proximate cause of the child’s death, our predecessors there, citing 1 Wharton, Criminal Law and Procedure Section 68 (Anderson Ed.), set forth the general rule that: “A person is only criminally liable for what he has caused, that is, there must be a causal relationship between his act and the harm sustained for which he is prosecuted.” 223 Md. at 353, 164 A. 2d at 474.
It goes without saying, that if the appellee had been shown not to have provided her child with medical attention through “gross or criminal negligence” — with “a wanton or reckless disregard for human life” — she would be subject to prosecution for common law involuntary manslaughter. See 21 Md. L. Rev. 262 (1961). The majority however undertakes *430to engraft upon the provisions of Art. 27, § 35A (a), the statute under which the appellee was charged,3 the elements of the common law offense of involuntary manslaughter and reaches an equivalent result by equating the phrase “cruel or inhumane treatment” with “gross or criminal negligence” and by substituting the word “injury” with the term “death.”
Penal statutes, those which command or prohibit certain acts and establish penalties for their violation, must be strictly construed in favor of the accused and against the state. Wanzer v. State, 202 Md. 601, 611, 97 A. 2d 914, 918 (1953); Weinecke v. State, 188 Md. 172, 176, 52 A. 2d 73, 74 (1947). The rule requiring a strict construction of such statutes means that the punishment proscribed will not be extended to cases not plainly falling within the language of the statute. Smith v. Higinbothom, 187 Md. 115, 130, 48 A. 2d 754, 761 (1946); State v. Fleming, 173 Md. 192, 196, 195 A. 392, 393 (1937); Healy v. State, 115 Md. 377, 379, 80 A. 1074, 1075 (1911); Mitchell v. State, 115 Md. 360, 364, 80 A. 1020, 1022 (1911). It is thus fundamental that no person can be held for violating a criminal statute unless the act with which he is charged comes plainly within both the letter and the spirit of the statute under which the charge is laid. State v. Sinclair and Sinwellan Corp., 274 Md. 646, 660, 337 A. 2d 703, 712 (1975); Fowel v. State, 206 Md. 101, 106, 110 A. 2d 524, 526 (1955).
As was stated in Daniel Loughran Co. v. Lord Baltimore Candy and Tobacco Co., 178 Md. 38, 47, 12 A. 2d 201, 205 (1940) “[t]he legislature, in the exercise of its power to declare what shall constitute a crime or punishable offense, must inform the citizen with reasonable precision what acts it intends to prohibit, so that he may have a certain understandable rule of conduct and know what acts it is his duty to avoid. 14 Am. Jur. 773, “CriminalLaw,” sec. 19; 16 C. *431J. 67; Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U. S. 385, 46 S. Ct. 126, 70 L. Ed. 322.”
As the majority points out, Art. 27, § 35A (a) punishes, as a felony, any parent, or other person “who causes abuse to such minor child.” “Abuse” is defined in subsection (b) 7 to mean: “[A]ny . . . physical injury or injuries sustained by a child as a result of cruel or inhumane treatment or as a result of malicious act or acts . . . .” The statute thus punishes any person who “causes [any physical injury or injuries [to be] sustained by a [minor] child as a result of cruel or inhumane treatment or as a result of malicious act or acts] ... .” (emphasis added)
The majority, despite what appears to be the clear and unambiguous meaning of “physical injury or injuries,” reads into the statute that the failure of the appellee to summon proper medical attention for her minor child, which they find to have been “cruel and inhumane treatment,” resulting in a worsening of the child’s condition and leading ultimately to her death, constituted “physical injury.”
It is axiomatic that “[w]here the statutory language is plain and free from ambiguity and so expresses a definite and sensible meaning, that meaning is conclusively presumed to be the meaning which the Legislature intended. The courts are not at liberty to surmise the legislative intention to be contrary to the words and letters of the statute, or to insert or delete words with a view of making the statute express an intention which is different from its plain meaning.” Fowel v. State, supra, at 105, 110 A. 2d at 526. See also Mitchell v. State, supra, at 365, 80 A. at 1022. As stated in Smith v. Higinbothom, supra, at 125, 48 A. 2d at 759, “[w]here the language is clear and free from doubt, the Court has no power to evade it by forced and unreasonable construction in order to assert its own ideas of policy or morals.”
It is inconsistent “with the just and benign spirit of our law to give to a criminal statute an interpretation which can be maintained only by a keen and scholastic ingenuity, [since] [t]he meaning of the law which [might] consign a man to prison . . . should be plain and obvious, and easily *432understood by an ordinary capacity.” James v. State, 63 Md. 242, 253 (1885), where it is further stated: “[o]ur functions are limited to interpreting and enforcing the legislative will when it has been declared; and it would be very unwarrantable in us to permit any private sentiments of our own to affect the construction which we give to these statutes.” 63 Md. at 254.
It seems to me to be only by a “keen and scholastic ingenuity” that the majority is able to read into the phrase “physical injury or injuries,” an interpretation that this means a worsening or deterioration of a physical condition which results in death. Such a construction seems clearly contrary to the precept that “[cjourts are not at liberty to insert or delete words with a view toward making the statute express an intention which is different from its plain meaning.” Gatewood v. State, 244 Md. 609, 617, 224 A. 2d 677, 682 (1966); Fowel v. State, supra, at 105, 110 A. 2d at 526.
At no place does the legislature suggest that such a construction was intended. Prior to the amendment of the statute by.Ch. 835 of the Laws of 1973, the statute penalized any person “who maliciously beats, strikes or otherwise mistreats such minor child to such degree as to require medical treatment.” As the Court of Special Appeals pointed out, “the express purpose of the [1973] revision was to encourage the reporting of instances of abuse and only incidentally to rearrange and revise the language thereof.” 24 Md. App. at 713, 332 A. 2d at 327. There is nothing in the Title to the Act, nor in its preamble, to justify the interpretation here reached by the majority. See Fabritz v. State, supra, at 714, nn. 3 and 4,332 A. 2d at 327, nn. 4 and 5.
“Death,” as defined in Webster’s New International Dictionary (2d ed. 1948), is “[t]he cessation of all vital functions without capability of resuscitation;.. . [the] act or fact of dying.” The statute punishes one who causes “physical injury” — not one who causes death — by conduct which is “cruel or inhumane,” or by a “malicious act or acts.”
Ascribing to the legislature a knowledge of the existing law as to involuntary manslaughter, applied in Palmer v. *433State, supra, and in Craig v. State, supra, I cannot see how it could have intended, when it revised in 1973, the provisions of Art. 27, § 35A (a), as limited by the definition of “abuse” in subsection (b) 7, to supersede the common law of manslaughter, and indeed to apply a different penalty, where a parent, by criminal negligence fails to promptly provide its minor child with medical care and thus contributes to the death of the child.
The acts of the mother here, although theoretically criminally negligent were not such as to cause “physical injury” to her daughter; those injuries had already been inflicted by a third party.4 Although her failure to more promptly seek medical aid may have contributed to the “act of dying” and have hastened the “cessation of all vital functions,” such failure on her part did not cause any “physical injury or injuries” as those terms are well defined. The statute, clearly intending to punish acts falling outside the common law of assault, but short of manslaughter, undertook to proscribe “cruel and inhumane treatment” or “malicious act or acts” which directly result in “physical injury or injuries” to such a child. Although Virginia Fabritz’ non-feasance in performing a legal duty she owed her daughter, may have subjected her to a prosecution for manslaughter, her conduct was without the language and obvious intention of the statute invoked.
I agree with the conclusion reached by the Court of Special Appeals “that to be guilty under the statute, the accused must be shown to have caused the injury, not simply [to have] aggravated it by failure to seek [medical] assistance.” 24 Md. App. at 714, 332 A. 2d at 327.
Secondarily, even though I concur with the view of the majority, that an offense under the statute is committed “if physical injury to the child resulted either, from a course of conduct constituting ‘cruel and inhumane treatment,’ or by *434‘malicious act or acts,’ ” I cannot agree that under the facts of this case, the failure of the appellee — over a period of approximately eight hours — to seek out medical attention constituted such a “course of conduct.” As I read the statute, the term “cruel and inhumane,” in juxtaposition with the words “malicious act or acts,” implies for its application, an element of malice equivalent to an act or acts shown to be “malicious” and requires a scienter to cause the child to suffer physical injury. Since the object of the statute proscribes wanton acts causing physical injury to such a minor child, it was not within the intent of the statute to punish one for having made a poor and even negligent attempt at treatment, albeit made in good faith.
There is no evidence that the appellee’s negative action in failing to more promptly obtain medical assistance imputed to her any intent to permit the child to continue to suffer or to die. When she noticed that the child was in a semi-conscious state, she fed her liquids to give her strength. Upon noticing a deterioration in her physical condition, she called upon a friend to assist her. The child was then bathed with alcohol, her temperature taken and she was dressed in pajamas. Thereafter, a volunteer fire company ambulance was called and the child was taken to the hospital. Although deficient, the treatment attempted, with obvious negligence, by the appellee was in no way intended to cause her daughter any greater suffering, or death. As in Craig v. State, supra, the choice made by the appellant was the wrong one; even though it may have constituted an abnegation of her parental duty and an abuse of parental discretion, such failure to seek medical care was not intended to cause, or inflict, any “physical injury.”
Although facts which might establish a continuing “course of conduct of cruel and inhumane” treatment, resulting in “physical injury” to a minor child may be visualized, we do not have such evidence here. There is no suggestion in the evidence that the appellant had ever assaulted, beaten or abused the child or treated it cruelly or inhumanely. We have only the mother’s failure to promptly summon medical aid, coupled with expert testimony that with *435surgical intervention — as much as an hour before death — the child “would have had a chance to live.” The appellee’s negative conduct in this regard, without any showing of malice or scienter, did not constitute “cruel and inhumane treatment” as contemplated within the terms of the statute.
I would reverse the judgment of the Circuit Court for Calvert County.

. See also the observations of Holmes, J. in Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U. S. 197, 400 (1904), that “great cases, like hard cases, make bad law....”

. There is a certain parallel between the facts in the instant case and those in Craig v. State, supra; in both cases the parents attempted, albeit unsuccessfully and negligently, to alleviate the child’s suffering; in neither case were the respective parents the initial cause of the child’s malady.

. The indictment charged that the appellee “... did unlawfully abuse, Windy Lynn Fabritz, a minor child ... by inflicting physical injuries sustained as a result of cruel and inhumane treatment, or as a result of malicious act or acts,....”

. The appellee was acquitted of “assault and battery,” the trial court finding “no evidence in this case of any hitting or assaulting of the child by this defendant.” A co-defendant, Thomas (“Tommy”) Crockett, in whose custody the minor child had been, during the two-day period when she sustained her physical injuries was subsequently tried and acquitted for lack of evidence.