Court Opinion

ID: 9753051
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 18:54:42.947711+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:27:28.729275
License: Public Domain

MURPHY, Chief Judge.
Maryland Code (1982 Repl.Vol.), Article 27, § 36(a) provides in relevant part that
“[ejvery person who shall wear or carry any dirk knife, bowie knife, switchblade knife, sandclub, metal knuckles, razor, nunchaku, or any other dangerous or deadly weapon of any kind, whatsoever (penknives without switchblade and handguns, excepted) concealed upon or about his person ... shall be guilty of a misdemeanor____” (Emphasis supplied.)
The appellant was charged under this statute in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City upon the following indictment:
*808“The Jurors of the State of Maryland, for the body of the City of Baltimore, do on their oath present that GARY HARRISON HALL late of said City, on the 19th day of September, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred eighty-one, in the City aforesaid, unlawfully did wear and carry concealed upon and about his person a certain dangerous and deadly weapon, to wit: a knife, contrary to the form of the Act of Assembly in such case made and provided, and against the peace, government and dignity of the State. (Carrying Concealed Weapon— Art. 27, Sec. 36).”
The appellant made no objection at or during trial to the sufficiency or form of the charge contained in the indictment. He was convicted of the offense and appealed, contending that the indictment was defective for failure to allege an offense in that it omitted an essential ingredient of the crime, namely, that the knife was not within the exception stated in the statute, i.e., that it was not a penknife without switchblade. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed the judgment. Hall v. State, 57 Md.App. 1, 468 A.2d 1015 (1983). It concluded that the omission of the penknife exception from the indictment did not result in its failure to charge an offense in view of the provisions of Maryland Rule 711 d (now Md.Rule 4-202(d)) that a charging document “need not negate an exception, excuse or proviso contained in a statute ... creating or defining the offense charged.”
The appellant argues before us that under Mackall v. State, 283 Md. 100, 387 A.2d 762 (1978), the penknife exception is an essential ingredient of the statutory crime and consequently its omission from the indictment rendered the charging document void for failure to state an offense. He claims that Rule 711d is limited in application to those exceptions, excuses and provisos that are not elements of the offense but rather matters of defense. He contends that the constitutional mandate of Article 21 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights requires that all elements of the offense be included in the charging document and that the *809rule therefore cannot be interpreted in contravention of the constitutional provision.
As we observed in Williams v. State, 302 Md. 787, 490 A.2d 1277 (1984), Maryland Rule 736 a (now Md.Rule 4-252(a)) requires that a motion claiming a non-jurisdictional defect in a charging document must be timely raised prior to trial or it is waived. We think the averments of the indictment in this case that the appellant did wear and carry concealed upon his person a dangerous and deadly knife in violation of § 36(a) sufficiently characterized the statutory crime charged so that the indictment was not defective for failure to charge an offense within the jurisdiction of the circuit court. As the appellant made no pretrial motion to dismiss the indictment, we need not determine whether the indictment was defective on a non-jurisdictional ground.
JUDGMENT AFFIRMED, WITH COSTS.