Court Opinion

ID: 9650205
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:26:59.44895+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:18.962048
License: Public Domain

Murphy, C. J.,

concurring:
I dissented in Newton v. State, 280 Md. 260, 373 A. 2d 262 (1977), on the ground that convictions and the imposition of separate punishments thereon at a single trial of the distinct offenses of murder in the perpetration of an attempted robbery (felony murder) and the attempted robbery itself did not, under the applicable required evidence test, violate the double jeopardy clause of the federal constitution. I expressed the belief in Newton that the weight of authority supported that view. The subsequently decided Supreme Court cases of Brown v. Ohio, 432 U. S. 161, 97 S. Ct. 2221, 53 L.Ed.2d 187 (1977), and Harris v. Oklahoma, 433 U. S. 682, 97 S. Ct. 2912, 53 L.Ed.2d 1054 (1977), which the majority cites in support of the contrary view which it took in Newton deal with successive prosecutions and not, as here, with a single *726prosecution for multiple offenses. While undoubtedly the same double jeopardy principles are applicable to cumulative punishments for the same offense as well as to successive prosecutions for what in law amounts to the same offense, I will abide by my dissent in Newton until the Supreme Court makes it crystal clear that the double jeopardy clause bars separate punishments at the same trial upon conviction of felony murder as well as the underlying felony. Whether Newton was wrongly decided was not an issue encompassed by our certiorari grant in this case. I therefore concur in the judgments in these cases.