Court Opinion

ID: 9749658
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-27 16:56:01.28655+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:25:33.386318
License: Public Domain

McAULIFFE, Judge,
dissenting.
I do not agree that by enacting Chapter 695 of the Acts of 1967 the General Assembly intended to change the law of limitations in criminal cases. The bill itself, and its legislative history, strongly suggest that the legislature was responding to the 1967 recommendation of the Commission to Study the Correctional System of Maryland and the 1966 Report of the Legislative Council Committee on Prison Administration, and that it had no intention of changing the long-standing law which excluded penitentiary misdemean*622ors from the operation of the one year statute of limitations. Subsequent action by the General Assembly in enacting § 5-106(a) of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article confirms that the legislative body had no intention of affecting the law of limitations when it enacted Chapter 695.
This Court has said that “[t]he ‘meaning, of the plainest language’ is controlled by the context in which it appears.” Kaczorowski v. City of Baltimore, 309 Md. 505, 514, 525 A.2d 628 (1987), quoting Guardian Life Ins. v. Ins. Comm’r, 293 Md. 629, 642, 446 A.2d 1140 (1982). The proper function of the Court is to define the legislative purpose or goal. Kaczorowski, supra, 309 Md. at 514, 525 A.2d 62.
The title of Senate Bill 568, which was enacted as. Chapter 695, is comprehensive, and in my judgment fully explains the goal of the legislature. Consistent with the requirements of Article III, section 29 of the Constitution of Maryland, the title describes the single subject of the bill in the following language:
AN ACT to add new Section 689(g) to Article 27 of the Annotated Code of Maryland (1966 Supplement), title “Crimes and Punishments”, subtitle “Places of Reformation and Punishment”, subheading “Department of Correction”, subheading “Institutions”, to follow immediately after Section 689(f) thereof; to. repeal Section 690 of the said Article, subtitle and subheadings of the Code, and to enact a new Section 690 in lieu thereof, to stand in the place of the section so repealed; to repeal and re-enact, with amendments, Sections 691, 693, 697, 698, 699, 700A(a),. 701 and 702 of the said Article, subtitle and subheading of the Code, subheadings respectively “Prisoners” and “Miscellaneous”; to provide that sentences of prisoners formerly made by judges and trial magistrates to particular institutions under the control of the Department of Correction shall be made after the effective date of this Act to the jurisdiction of the Department of Correction, to authorize the Department to establish re*623ceiving and classification centers for prisoners, to authorize the Department to hold, assign and transfer prisoners among the State prison institutions as it deems necessary and to amend laws relating to prisoners in order to make such laws conform to the provisions of this Act.
Conspicuously absent is any statement of intent to change the basic structure of the law of limitations applicable to criminal misdemeanors.
The bill was introduced by Senators Snyder, Bishop, Byron, Hoyer, and Welcome. The 1966 Legislative Council Committee on Prison Administration was chaired by Senator Snyder, and counted among its members Senators Byron and Welcome. In its report to the General Assembly, the Committee recommended the very changes that three of its members later sponsored through this bill. At paragraph seven of its November, 1966 report, the Committee said:
In its consideration of the place of sentence of short-term offenders, the Committee has discussed a companion change in the sentencing of prisoners to the State system. At the present time the judge pronouncing sentence designates the prison facility where the sentence is to be served. We recognize that this procedure is archaic. We have seen photographs of the diagnostic and receiving facility in Texas to which all sentenced prisoners first go. This type of facility would be desirable in Maryland and could be possibly established in conjunction with transfer of the Penitentiary. We endorse the concept of initial assignment of all prisoners in the State system to such a center with transfer later to a suitable facility for confinement. This would require a statutory change to sentence prisoners to the custody of the Department of Correction. We note that the criminal laws are presently being reviewed by the Bruñe Commission and our comments should be referred to that group for consideration.
In 1966, the Commission to Study the Correctional System of Maryland, chaired by Judge Benjamin Michaelson, received “A Study of Maryland State Department of Corree*624tion,” prepared by the American Correctional Association. The study recommended a change in the method of commitment of prisoners. This language was used:
With the proposed establishment of two diagnostic and reception centers and recommended improvements in classification, it is essential that courts commit to the Commissioner rather than to a specific institution. Under this arrangement, individuals committed are received, diagnosed and classified in keeping with their special treatment needs and placed by the Department in the institution or program which best serves to meet these needs.
In 1967, the Commission recommended
that prisoners when sentenced by the courts should be committed to the Department of Correctional Services rather than to a specific institution as is now the practice.
Report of the Commission to Study the Correction System of Maryland, p. 3 (1967). There can be little doubt that Senate Bill 568, introduced in 1967, was a response to these recommendations, and nothing more.
The majority acknowledges that six years after the enactment of Chapter 695, the General Assembly re-wrote the law relating to limitations in misdemeanor cases, and transferred that law from Article 57, § 11 of the 1957 Code to § 5-106 of the 1974 Courts Article. The majority concedes" that in so doing, the legislature retained the “penitentiary misdemeanor” language that has historically defined those misdemeanors not subject to the one-year limitation. Section 5-106(a) provides as follows:
Except as provided by this section, a prosecution for a misdemeanor not made punishable by confinement in the penitentiary by statute shall be instituted within one year after the offense was committed.
The majority shrugs off this language as being insufficient to repeal Chapter 695 of the Acts of 1967. I suggest the majority misses the point. Section 5-106 was never intended to repeal anything. The legislature had no intention of changing the law of limitations when it enacted Chapter *625695 — thus it had no intention of repealing that law in 1973. Section 5-106(a) confirms that fact. The Revisor’s Note, which was before the legislature when it adopted § 5-106, offers further confirmation of this understanding. See Chapter 2, § 1, Laws of Maryland, First Special Session 1973, pp. 209-10.
Moreover, if the majority is correct, the “penitentiary” language of § 5-106(a) has absolutely no meaning, purpose, or effect. We do not generally ascribe to the legislature an intent to do a meaningless act. “Results that are unreasonable, illogical, or that are at odds with the legislative purpose should be avoided.” Harford County v. Edgewater, 316 Md. 389, 397, 558 A.2d 1219 (1989).
Chapter 695 of the Acts of 1967 did exactly what it was intended to do. It accomplished the correctional reforms that had been recommended to the legislature. The enactment of § 690(d) of Article 27 (now § 690(e)) was intended to affect the penitentiary language contained in other provisions of Article 27 only with respect to matters of sentencing, the authority of the Department of Correction, and places of confinement. It was not intended to, and did not, have any effect on the penitentiary language contained in other provisions of Article 27 as that language related to the applicable period of limitations.
I would affirm the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals.