Court Opinion

ID: 9883663
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 02:07:32.081953+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:17.859717
License: Public Domain

GARRITY, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the majority’s conclusion that the trial judge found evidence of an intent merely to commit grievous bodily harm rather than finding evidence sufficient from which to infer an intent to kill. In explaining my interpretation of the court’s finding, it is necessary to briefly revisit the law relating to attempted murder in the second degree.
*444The common-law crime of attempt is generally defined as the intent to commit a crime, coupled with some overt act beyond mere preparation in furtherance of that crime. Wiley v. State, 237 Md. 560, 207 A.2d 478 (1965). In analyzing the crime of attempted murder in the second degree, Judge Cole observed on behalf of the Court in Hardy v. State, 301 Md. 124, 482 A.2d 474 (1984):
The crime of attempt, in a literal sense, is an adjunct crime—it cannot exist by itself, but only in connection with another crime. Although it remains a common-law crime, attempt is applicable to any existing crime, statutory or common law____ The crime of attempt by definition expands and contracts and is redefined commensurate with the substantive offense.
If the evidence satisfied the fact finder by proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the conduct of the defendant falls within the proscribed conduct in the statute labeled as first degree murder that did not result in death of the victim, then the crime of attempted murder in the first degree has been established. If the evidence of criminal culpability is something less, the crime proved may be attempted murder in the second degree or attempted voluntary manslaughter. We emphasize that the basic characteristic of an attempt is that it adjusts according to the proof established at trial.
Id. at 139-140, 482 A.2d 474.
In Glenn v. State, 68 Md.App. at 385, 511 A.2d 1110, this court enumerated the four types of murder, each of which has its own mens rea, as: intent to kill murder; intent to commit grievous bodily harm murder; felony murder; and depraved heart murder. Judge Moylan, writing on our behalf, explained:
The presence of one of these intents is an indispensable ingredient, although not the only necessary ingredient, of that slippery legal concept known as “malice.” Indeed, the text writers have for 300 years referred to the original murderous mens rea—the intent to kill—as “express malice.” They have also referred to the latter three *445murderous mentes reae—all of which came into homicide law during its rapid evolution in the early seventeenth century—as the three forms of “implied malice.” The original legal fiction, of course, was that any of the latter three states of mind “implied” the former; proof of any of the latter three intents was a predicate fact from which the factfinder could permissibly infer the intent to kill. Legal analysis has now reached a point of sophistication, however, where we recognize that each of these four intents is independently blameworthy enough to support a murder conviction. Each is an autonomous murderous mens rea in its own right and not a mere evidentiary avenue to one of the others.
Id. (Footnote omitted).
Relevant to the instant case is the principle that the intent to commit grievous bodily harm (which could result in death) serves as a legally sufficient predicate to support the inference of a murderous mens rea.
In post trial discussion, the trial judge explained that he had based his finding of guilt as to attempted second degree murder on the law of homicide as explicated in Davis v. State, 237 Md. 97, 205 A.2d 254 (1964), wherein the victim had died following a vicious fight. In affirming the judgment, the Court observed that the brutality and severity of a beating are evidence of an intent to commit a homicide.”
The majority acknowledge that the trial judge in the case sub judice relied on the principles enunciated in Davis as rationale for his finding the appellant guilty of attempted second degree murder. The majority, however, then completely ignore the inference of malice permitted under Davis and conclude “[i]t is clear from the foregoing that the trial court determined that the only intent necessary to support appellant’s conviction of attempted second degree murder was the intent to do grievous bodily harm----”
As observed by Judge Hammond in Davis v. State, 204 Md. 44, 51, 102 A.2d 816 (1954), an assault with intent to murder case wherein the Court remanded upon the refusal *446of the trial court to instruct on the existence of malice as a predicate to finding an intent to murder, as opposed to its absence, which would indicate manslaughter:
[M]alice exists not only when there is an actual, express intent to kill, but may be inferred when there is an intent to do or inflict great bodily harm, or when one wilfully does an act or wilfully fails to do a duty and the natural tendency of the act or failure is to cause death or great bodily harm.
Since intent is subjective and, without the cooperation of the accused, cannot be directly and objectively proven, its presence must be shown by established facts which permit a proper inference of its existence. Malice and, so intent to murder, may be inferred from all the facts and circumstances of the occurrence. The deliberate selection and use of a deadly weapon directed at a vital part of the body is a circumstance which indicates a design to kill, since in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the law presumes that one intends the natural and probable consequences of his act.
The testimony established that the appellant had stabbed his victim in the back, inflicting a wound three centimeters in length and six centimeters in depth. According to the examining physician, a stab wound that extends into the chest cavity creates a potential for hemorrhaging which, if not staunched, could be fatal. Only the protection afforded by the victim’s shoulder blade prevented further penetration of the knife. In addition, when Lawrence turned, the appellant repeatedly attempted to slash him. The assaults ended only with the arrival of the police.
I think it is clear that the trial judge determined that although the evidence failed to establish premeditation and deliberation so as to support a conviction of attempted first degree murder, the evidence was sufficient to establish malice, a fortiori, an inference of a murderous mens rea, so that, if death had followed the assault, the offense would have been murder in the second degree. I would affirm the judgment.