Court Opinion

ID: 9751105
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 16:05:59.909154+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:26:35.318140
License: Public Domain

Lowe,' J.

dissenting:

I cannot dispute that we have heretofore saddled society with yet another "academic possibility” providing one more pressure valve for an accused. As pointed out in Shuck v. State, 29 Md. App. 33, 40 (1975), quoting n. 4 of Evans v. State, 28 Md. App. 640, 658 (1975), the imperfect self-defense concept is predicated upon "esoteric extenuating circumstances, 'not yet far advanced;’ ” however, the footnote of Evans was "advanced” by the dicta of Shuck which in turn was again "advanced” by application in Law v. State, 29 Md. App. 457 (1975), where we said that it is a mitigation defense, not an exculpation. In that singular application of the newly discovered academic esoteria we noted that its effect was to "negate malice” and that it would "reduce what might otherwise be murder to manslaughter.” I cannot agree to extend its application beyond its specified purpose; but more importantly, I am now convinced that we should back off from the limited course we set in Shuck, supra, and Law, supra.
For this Court now to "perfect” the not very far advanced academic possibility predicated upon esoteric extenuating circumstances from an imperfect mitigation of malice in murder to an absolute exculpation of assault with intent to murder, engrafts upon that statutory crime an implication of knowledge in the Legislature decades ago, which we ourselves have only now admixed in our thinking and have not yet "set” long enough to jell. To this extent the Legislature may alleviate the resultant damage we- have imposed upon that crime by semantically correcting assault with intent to murder to assault with intent to kill. This *123would negate the desultory effect of an imperfect self-defense upon that statutory crime which obviously was never intended or even contemplated.
But I further question the general philosophy of permitting even a mitigating defense predicated upon the subjective "belief’ of a killer despite the admitted unreasonableness of such a belief. There is left no standard by which the violent conduct can be measured except that standard peculiar to the killer himself. I must confess that I sat silently in Shuck where the academic possibility became something more than academic. But I cannot perpetuate my sin of silence when the practical significance of an academically reasonable concept addressed conceptually but not applied practically, upon ultimate application exposes the stark impracticality of such application. The criminal law as an instrument of societal control cannot allow violence to be excused solely upon the whims of the perpetrator. His conduct must be measured against some societal norm of reasonableness.
Embarrassing as it is to confess my former beguilement I would stifle any further advance of this esoteric concept and return it to the scholars who conceived it. I am encouraged that the Court of Appeals has refused to permit as part of the guilt determining calculus a legally sane defendant even to introduce evidence of his perplexed state of mind as a diminution of responsibility for his violent conduct. Johnson v. State, 292 Md. 405 (1982). See also Simmons v. State, 292 Md. 478 (1982), the appeal of which was predicated upon the same Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U.S. 684 (1975), reasoning, relied upon in the case before us.
I respectfully dissent.