Court Opinion

ID: 9764655
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:34:37.84668+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:59.663812
License: Public Domain

*502MOYLAN, Judge,
dissenting.
Respectfully, I dissent. As I read the majority opinion, its thrust seems to be that because the criminal statute, art. 27, § 35C, did not incorporate language from Fam.Law Art., § 5-327(a)(l), prohibiting anyone “who renders any service” in connection with an adoption from charging for or receiving any compensation for that service, the conduct of the appellant in this case is thereby not covered by the criminal statute.
I cannot subscribe to the majority’s logic because I reject its major premise — that there is a necessary relationship between the criminal statute and the section from the Family Law Article referred to by the majority. I do not read § 35C to be nothing more than a criminal law complement (or supplement) to the Family Law section prohibiting compensation for assisting in an adoption. Section 35C was enacted into law by Chapter 300 of the Acts of 1989. The history of the bill (Senate Bill 58) through the amending process does, indeed, reveal that there were legislators who sought to establish a connection between the two provisions. The words of the ultimate criminal statute speak for themselves, however, and the final draft shows that the Legislature rejected all linkage between the new criminal provision and the preexisting Family Law provision. What is apparent, moreover, is that the Legislature knew the proper words to say if it intended to limit § 35C to activity related to adoption proceedings. On the clear face of the criminal statute, there is no such limitation and no such linkage. To me, § 35C is unambiguous and there is, therefore, no need to resort to more peripheral guidelines of statutory interpretation.
The criminal statute, standing alone, clearly prohibits, in my judgment, any commercial trafficking in children. Had there been any intent to limit it to the adoption context, it would have been easy for the statute so to provide. It contains no such limitation.
*503The majority opinion’s analogy of trafficking in children to the sale of real or personal property is inapt. To transfer total and open-ended custody in a child in exchange for cash would run afoul of the spirit and the letter of the statute as surely as would an agreement to consent to adoption. The notion of “child selling” antedates formal adoption proceedings and would have included, it seems to me, such phenomena from earlier times as selling an unwanted or expendable child to a passing gypsy caravan without any exchange of papers taking place. The phenomenon of selling a child into an apprenticeship for a term of years would also, in my judgment, run afoul of the modern statute. The statute might, indeed, comprehend such shorter term transfers as selling a child into prostitution — for an hour, for a night, for a week. Even as a prostitute might sell or offer to sell her body, a child-trafficker could sell or offer to sell a child’s body. Any strained distinction between the transfer of title and the transfer of possession would be totally inapposite.
In my opinion, the subject matter of the statute clearly would embrace the transfer of indefinite custody of the child in exchange for cash. In turning, therefore, to the legal sufficiency of the evidence, contained in the agreed statement of facts, to support the appellant’s conviction, we should approach that issue by looking simply to the criminal statute itself and to the available evidence with the aid of those normal tools of analysis provided by the criminal law.
If JoAnn Bauerlien had, in return for $4,000, sold the open-ended and indefinite custody of her son, she would have been guilty of a violation of § 35C. Assuming arguendo her criminal involvement, the issue would then become whether the appellant in some accessorial capacity shared her guilt. Had he acted as her agent, middleman, or broker in the hypothesized sale, he would be guilty as a principal in the second degree, regardless of whether he personally had any authority to transfer the child’s custody or not. Had he encouraged, assisted, induced, or counselled JoAnn Bauerlien beforehand, he would be guilty as one *504acting as an accessory-before-the-fact. The distinction between the two forms of accessoryship would be meaningless, moreover, because in the case of a misdemeanor, such as § 35C, all parties are principals.
This avenue of analysis, however, turns out to be a blind alley for, generally speaking, there cannot be a guilty accessory unless there is a guilty (not necessarily convicted, but nonetheless guilty) principal in the first degree. The limited data available in the agreed statement of facts showed JoAnn Bauerlien to be not guilty of any knowing participation in a sale. The agreed statement includes her denial of any knowledge of money being received from Warren Seymour. It included her further averment that she was signing over the custody of her child simply in the best interests of that child. If she were not a principal in the first degree, the appellant could not then be an accessory to a crime that never occurred.
Section 35C, however, does not limit itself to prohibiting one to 1) sell, 2) barter, or 3) trade a child, acts which only JoAnn Bauerlien could do directly. It goes on, significantly, also to prohibit one to 1) offer to sell, 2) offer to barter, or 3) offer to trade a child. If the criminal action under review were that of selling, the appellant would be no more than a principal in the second degree and his guilt would be contingent upon proof of the complicity of JoAnn Bauerlien. If the criminal action under review were that of offering to sell, on the other hand, then the appellant would be a principal in the first degree and his guilt would not be contingent upon the complicity of anyone else.
This is where, in my opinion, the majority opinion is flawed. It analyzes the appellant’s conduct in terms of “influence peddling” and of “merely ‘persuading] Ms. Bauerlien to give up custody of her son, Jason Seymour.” I think the significance of the appellant’s conduct in this case is not what he did vis-a-vis JoAnn Bauerlien but, rather, what he did vis-a-vis Warren Seymour.
*505In assessing the legal sufficiency of the evidence to support a conviction, an appellate court is required to take that version of the facts most favorable to the State’s case and all inferences in that direction that can permissibly be drawn. The agreed statement of facts included the following:
“Mr. Seymour ... was contacted by the Defendant on 8/16/89 and was told by the Defendant on that date that the Defendant could persuade JoAnn Bauerlien to sign over custody of Jason Seymour to Mr. Seymour at a price of four thousand dollars.”
From this, buttressed by events over the next two days indicating that the appellant had been successful in his persuasion, the permissible inference could have been drawn by Warren Seymour that JoAnn Bauerlien had agreed to the sale and that the appellant was acting as her agent. Indeed, as of his first contact with Warren Seymour, the inference was permissible that the appellant was holding himself out as having apparent authority to broker the sale for JoAnn Bauerlien and to negotiate, as middleman on her behalf, the ultimate sale price. He offered the child for sale whether he had the actual authority to do so or not. The evidence was thus legally sufficient to support the conclusion that the appellant was guilty of offering to sell the child. The trial judge was, therefore, not clearly erroneous in rendering a verdict of guilty».
There remains only the pleading problem of whether the indictment adequately charged that the appellant did “offer to sell” the child. Explicitly, it did not. The indictment charged that the appellant unlawfully did “sell, barter and trade” the child. Implicitly, however, the indictment did, in my judgment, charge the appellant with offering to sell the child. I reach this conclusion because of my belief that agreeing to sell, either by offering to sell or by accepting someone else’s offer to buy, is a lesser included offense within the greater inclusive offense of the sale itself.
The common law principle that the charging of a greater offense permits a jury to return a verdict on a lesser *?included offense has been recognized and approved by the Supreme Court. In Beck v. Alabama, 447 U.S. 625, 633, 100 S.Ct. 2382, 2387, 65 L.Ed.2d 392, 400 (1980), it explained:
“At common law the jury was permitted to find the defendant guilty of any lesser offense necessarily included in the offense charged. This rule originally developed as an aid to the prosecution in cases in which the proof failed to establish some element of the crime charged. But it has long been recognized that it can also be beneficial to the defendant because it affords the jury a less drastic alternative than the choice between conviction of the offense charged and acquittal.” (Footnote and citation omitted).
See also Schmuck v. United States, 489 U.S. 705, 718-19, 109 S.Ct. 1443, 1451-52, 103 L.Ed.2d 734, 748 (1989).
Indeed, Keeble v. United States, 412 U.S. 205, 93 S.Ct. 1993, 36 L.Ed.2d 844 (1973), raises the strong implication that this principle, beneficial to the defendant and the State alike, may be constitutionally mandated. Justice Brennan observed for the Court, at 412 U.S. 213, at 93 S.Ct. 1998:
“Indeed, while we have never explicitly held that the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment guarantees the right of a defendant to have the jury instructed on a lesser included offense, it is nevertheless clear that a construction of the Major Crimes Act to preclude such an instruction would raise difficult constitutional questions.”
We placed our unequivocal imprimatur upon this principle in Johnson v. State, 38 Md.App. 100, 109, 379 A.2d 436 (1977):
“The clear weight of authority is that conviction of a necessarily included lesser offense is permissible under a document charging a greater offense.”
In Grimes v. State, 44 Md.App. 580, 583, 409 A.2d 767 (1980), rev’d on other grounds, 290 Md. 236, 429 A.2d 228 (1981) , Judge Wilner traced with impeccable logic the soundness of such a principle:
“The very element of inclusiveness — the theory that the greater offense necessarily incorporates within it the lesser offense — also means that a conviction of the greater presupposes a finding of guilt on the lesser included offense as well. In algebraic terms, if A is the sum of B and C, the establishment of A of necessity also establishes both B and C. This applies not only to a conviction, but also to a charge. An allegation of A is deemed to include an allegation of B and C, its constituent parte. Thus, upon that rationale, courts have rather consistently held that a charging document is effective to charge and, upon proper proof to permit conviction of, not only the particular offense specifically alleged but, in addition, all lesser offenses necessarily included within it, whether or not they are themselves separately stated. See in general 42 C.J.S. Indictments and Informations, §§ 271, 272. We concluded directly in Johnson v. State, 38 Md.App. 100, 109 [379 A.2d 436] (1977): ‘The clear weight of authority is that conviction of a necessarily included lesser offense is permissible under a document charging a greater offense____’ Compare, however, Bennett v. State, 229 Md. 208, 217 [182 A.2d 815] (1962); Davis v. State, 39 Md. 355 (1874).
The theory underlying this secondary product of merger is not that it is permissible to convict a person of a crime that has not been charged, but rather that the greater charge includes the lesser. Thus, when a defendant stands trial on the greater, inclusive, charge, he in fact and in law stands trial at the same time on all of the lesser, included, charges as well.” 1
The crime of illicitly selling a thing includes elements, such as the delivery of the product and/or the receipt of the *508consideration, that go' beyond the inchoate agreement to sell. The mens rea of illicitly selling, however, is such that it necessarily includes the inchoate agreement to sell. That agreement may take either of two alternative and reciprocal forms: 1) an offer to sell or 2) an acceptance of someone else’s offer to buy. In either of those alternative forms (should either be declared illegal, as the offer has been declared by § 35C), it would be a lesser included offense within the greater inclusive offense of actually selling. Cf. Nightingale v. State, 312 Md. 699, 542 A.2d 373 (1988).
The appellant was implicitly charged with offering to sell. The evidence was legally sufficient to support that charge. I would, therefore, affirm the conviction.

. On three occasions, the Court of Appeals granted certiorari to consider this question. On all three occasions, it concluded that the issue was not properly before it. Grimes v. State, 290 Md. 236, 240, 429 A.2d 228 (1981); Hawkins v. State, 291 Md. 688, 689, 692, 436 A.2d 900 (1981); Shell v. State, 307 Md. 46, 51 n. 2, 512 A.2d 358 (1986). And see Hook v. State, 315 Md. 25, 39-40, 553 A.2d 233 (1989).