Court Opinion

ID: 9859553
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 21:59:55.775016+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:52:52.130157
License: Public Domain

McAULIFFE, Judge,
dissenting.
I disagree with Part I of the Court’s opinion, and with the result the Court has reached. Kramer was charged with a crime. He was charged with driving a motor vehicle with knowledge that the motor vehicle was not covered by the required security, a violation of § 17-107(a) of the Transportation Article. Section 17-104 of the Transportation Article mandates the furnishing of the required security as a condition to, and a prerequisite for the continuation of, registration of a motor vehicle in this State. Section 13-402(a) requires that:
Except as otherwise provided in this section or elsewhere in the Maryland Vehicle Law, each motor vehicle ... driven on a highway shall be registered under this subtitle.
Section 13-402.1 allows a nonresident to drive a foreign vehicle in this State without registering that vehicle in this State, but only under specified circumstances. If, for example, the State had been able to show that Kramer’s vehicle was regularly operated in carrying on business in this State, the vehicle would not have been exempted from the requirements of registration under § 13-402.1. Because § 17-104(b) requires the owner to maintain the required security for any “motor vehicle that is required to be registered in this State,” the State could have argued that Kramer drove a vehicle that was required to be registered, and therefore needed to be covered by the required security, with knowledge that it was not so covered.
The State did not prove the charge of driving without the required security, and if Kramer had challenged that convic*595tion on the ground of insufficiency of the evidence, he would have prevailed. He did not do so, either in the Court of Special Appeals or in this Court. At all stages, the parties simply assumed that Maryland law required coverage for the Kramer vehicle while it was being operated in this State.
The question that this Court should have reached is whether the trial judge abused his discretion in denying Kramer’s motion to sever the charge of driving without the required security from the remaining charges. Given the particular facts of this case, that becomes a close question. The trial judge was aware that the State’s proof on the insurance charge would include the fact that Kramer fraudulently obtained registration for the vehicle in Pennsylvania by representing that he was insured when he knew that he was not. That fact would not have been admissible in a separate trial of the manslaughter and related charges, and it had a potential for improper prejudice against the defendant. These circumstances would have justified the granting of a severance. These circumstances did not, however, mandate the granting of a severance.
We are not dealing with the situation we faced in McKnight v. State, 280 Md. 604, 375 A.2d 551 (1977), or in State v. Jones, 284 Md. 232, 395 A.2d 1182 (1979). Those cases involved the question of joinder of charges that were not part of a single transaction. Kramer’s case involves the defendant’s attempt to sever charges that did arise out of a single transaction. Under the clear language of the Court in Jones, this case falls within the exception to the general rule of non-joinder.
We repeat; there must be a causal relation or logical or natural connection among the various acts or they must form part of a continuing transaction to fall within the exception.
Id. at 244, 395 A.2d 1182. Maryland Rule 4-203(a) recognizes the same distinction:
Two or more offenses, whether felonies or misdemeanors or any combination thereof, may be charged in sepa*596rate counts of the same charging document if the offenses charged are of the same or similar character or are based on the same act or transaction or on two or more acts or transactions connected together or constituting parts of a common scheme or plan.
Rule 4-253(c) permits the trial judge to sever counts properly joined in a single charging document, but the right to do so is committed to the sound discretion of the trial judge. Reversal for failure to sever charges properly joined in the first instance should be limited to those cases where the defendant is able to demonstrate a clear abuse of that discretion.
Maryland Rules 4-203 and 4-253 closely follow Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 8 and 14. Accordingly, we should find persuasive the interpretation given those Rules by the federal courts. Referring to Rule 14, Professor Moore states:
[T]he way the Rule is administered by the courts is to presume that if joinder is properly pleaded under Rule 8 then joint trials should follow. This places a heavy burden on a defendant moving under Rule 14 which is not satisfied by the claim that the defendant would have had a “better chance of acquittal” in a separate trial, (footnotes omitted).
8 Moore’s Federal Practice § 14.02[1] (1983). The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has stated:
The test is whether joinder is so manifestly prejudicial that it outweighs the dominant concern with judicial economy and compels the exercise of the court’s discretion to sever.
United States v. Brashier, 548 F.2d 1315, 1323 (9th Cir. 1976), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 1111, 97 S.Ct. 1149, 51 L.Ed.2d 565 (1977). The trial judge in this case balanced the expense, inconvenience and delay that would necessarily be occasioned by separate jury trials against the possible prejudice that might result to the defendant from a single trial. He considered the fact that he could instruct the jury that they were not to consider any evidence bearing on the *597insurance charge in determining the remaining charges, and vice versa.1 I cannot say that the trial judge abused his discretion in denying the motion to sever.2 I would reverse the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals and direct that judgment below be affirmed.

. The trial judge did, in fact, give a comprehensive instruction to this effect.

. Of course, if the defendant, who clearly had the burden of demonstrating prejudice, had informed the trial judge of the correct status of Maryland law relating to the necessity of insurance for foreign vehicles, and if the trial judge had consequently been made aware of the inherent weakness of the State’s case as it related to this charge, the outcome may have been different. The defendant did not do so.