Court Opinion

ID: 9761398
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 01:41:55.945046+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:23.560433
License: Public Domain

Lowe, J,

concurring:

I am in complete accord with the majority opinion as written but for a single word. I find no “cloud” over the italicized sentence from the Daniels v. Superintendent, 34 Md. App. 173, 180 (1976), quotation,

‘‘[hjaving overcome the presumption of sanity in defense of his homicide case as a matter of public judicial record, appellant may no longer rely upon a presumption of sanity. ”

Daniels was an appeal from an unsuccessful ruling after a hearing on petition for release under Md. Code, Art. 59, § 15, two years after his commitment under old § 27. Id. at 174. As pointed out by the majority in n. 6, the initial commitment proceeding with which we are preoccupied in the case sub judice, was not enacted until 1979, three years after Daniels was decided. In the context of this case I concur that the sentence does not provide even supportive dicta to the State for its theory that the presumption of sanity is lost upon a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity acquittal rather than upon the succeeding commitment initially made under the new § 27 proceeding. Addington v. Texas, 441 U.S. 418, 60 L.Ed.2d 323 (1979), does not, however, endanger either the holding of Daniels or the import of the sentence in the context in which it was written. Daniels addresses a § 15 petitioner’s burden and remains correct as written. Randall Williams addresses the State’s newly acquired burden in a contemporary § 27 proceeding and is equally correct.
As pointed out by the majority in its opinion in this case:
“In any subsequent hearing permitted by Md. Ann. Code art. 59, § 15, the burden of proof rests on the *600person to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that he is not suffering from a mental disorder . . . .” p. 598.
It follows that such person {e.g., the appellant Daniels) may — at that “subsequent hearing” stage — no longer rely on the presumption of sanity. Neither Williams nor Daniels should be looked to as authority for the other.