Court Opinion

ID: 9649633
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:04:10.039321+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:24:39.118744
License: Public Domain

WILNER, Judge, concurring, joined by RAKER, J.
I concur in the result. I write separately because, although the Court reaches the right result, it has not adequately addressed the issue actually raised by the petitioner.
As a result of shooting into the trailer occupied by five persons — two adults and three children — Ridgeway was charged with five counts, each, of first degree assault, second degree assault, attempted first degree murder, and reckless endangerment, and two counts of malicious destruction of property (one over $300 and one under $300). With respect to the two adults, the jury convicted him of first and second degree assault and reckless endangerment. As to the three children, the jury acquitted him of the assaults and convicted only of reckless endangerment. It also convicted of malicious destruction of property under $300. Notwithstanding the acquittals on three of the first and second degree assault charges, the court imposed five consecutive sentences for first degree assault — five years with respect to the male adult victim and ten years each with respect to the female adult and the three children. The court suspended imposition of sentence on the malicious destruction of property conviction and *175said that it regarded the other counts of second degree assault and reckless endangerment as merged.
When apprised that Ridgeway had been acquitted of the assault charges with respect to the children, the court struck the sentences imposed on those counts as illegal and entered consecutive sentences of five years each on the reckless endangerment convictions. In this appeal, Ridgeway construes the court’s initial action as a merger of the reckless endangerment convictions into the assault convictions and thus as a deliberate decision not to impose any sentence on the former. From that, he argues that, when the court later imposed the five-year sentences, it was effectively increasing the sentences from zero to five years, which, under the circumstances, Maryland Rule 4 — 345(b) forbids.
This Court finds no error in the reckless endangerment sentences, and I agree with that conclusion. It reaches that result, however, by treating the entire matter as simply the correction of illegal sentences. In so doing, it inappropriately collapses two different issues into one. Certainly, the striking of the three sentences imposed for assaulting the children represented the correction of illegal sentences. One cannot impose a sentence upon a charge of which the defendant was acquitted. That left the court with three reckless endangerment convictions for which no sentence had yet been imposed. To the extent that the court had previously announced a merger of those convictions, no such merger could lawfully have occurred as to the three counts involving the children, as there were no assault convictions into which they could be merged. That is a simple point, but it is one that should be made, as it lies at the heart of Ridgeway’s argument. At that point, the court could, if it wished, have declined to enter any sentence on the reckless endangerment convictions. It was not compelled, as part of correcting the illegal sentences imposed on the assault convictions, to do anything with respect to the reckless endangerment convictions. The imposition of lawful sentences upon those three reckless endangerment convictions, therefore, was not part of or justified by the correction of any illegal sentence but was simply the act of *176entering initial sentences upon convictions for which no sentences had yet been imposed. That is why the sentences are lawful — the same as if the court had initially deferred imposing sentence on those convictions.
Judge RAKER has authorized me to state that she joins in this concurring opinion.