Court Opinion

ID: 9714735
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:44:36.101526+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:28.287944
License: Public Domain

COLE, Judge,
dissenting.
I cannot reconcile the Court’s decision with the constitutional right of an accused under Article 21 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights 1 to be informed of the accusation against him. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.
I
The indictment here states that the accused “did wilfully and deliberately, with premeditation kill and slay” a named individual on a specified date in Anne Arundel County. The majority forthrightly acknowledges that this indictment omits the words “felonious,” “malice aforethought,” and “murder.” The Court further acknowledges, as it must, *28that this indictment is defective under the statutory short form for murder set forth in Md.Code (1957, 1982 Repl. Vol.), Art. 27, § 616. Despite this defect, the Court nonetheless concludes that the remaining averments in the indictment “were sufficient, for jurisdictional purposes, to invest the circuit court with power to proceed to trial on the then unchallenged indictment[.]” The Court contends that the averments in the indictment reasonably apprised the appellant “that he was charged with unlawful homicide and specifically, by its reference to §§ 407-410 of Art. 27, with first degree murder.” Several aspects of this reasoning provoke comment.
At bottom, the only conceivable reason appellant could have been informed that he was charged with first degree murder is the parenthetical reference in the indictment to §§ 407-410 of Art. 27.2 One therefore gathers that this case stands for the rather remarkable proposition that citation to a criminal statute will reasonably apprise the defendant of the crime with which he is charged consistent with Article 21 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights. I must confess that I have never understood this to be the law in Maryland. Furthermore, for reasons it never cares to explain, the Court inexplicably ignores the cautionary words written by Judge Digges barely four years ago in a case involving the sufficiency of charging documents:
Nor are the defects in these particular charging documents ameliorated by the citation of the statutory section, the violation of which the defendants were intended to be charged; reference to the criminal enactment does not supply the missing elements and satisfy the requirements of our constitution. It takes little imagination to foresee that the State’s contention, if accepted, would obviate the necessity of alleging any material element of *29the offense, for any distinction which might be drawn between supplying a crucial element by citation of the statute and supplying all essential allegations in this manner is so fine as to be well-nigh invisible.
Ayre v. State, 291 Md. 155, 166-68, 433 A.2d 1150, 1158 (1981) (footnote omitted; emphasis in original). Judge Digges went on to explain that although authority for each count charged is required to be furnished by the Maryland Rules, “[t]his reference exists as a matter of convenience to the parties and the court, and thus possesses no substance of its own.” Id. at 168 n. 9, 433 A.2d at 1158 n. 9. As applied to this case, Ayre therefore requires that we disregard the parenthetical citations to Maryland’s murder statutes in determining whether the indictment has fulfilled its constitutionally mandated informative purposes. Consequently, I come to the Court’s contention that the indictment reasonably apprised appellant that he was charged with “unlawful homicide.”
Once the indictment is stripped of these citations, the Court does not — and cannot — state that the indictment specifically informs appellant that he has been charged with first degree murder. Neither does the indictment specifically inform appellant that he has been charged with second degree murder or, for that matter, manslaughter. Appellant is therefore at a loss to determine from the face of the indictment whether he has been charged with murder or manslaughter. The Court does not pause to consider that “unlawful homicide” includes a comparatively large array of offenses (first degree murder, second degree murder, manslaughter) that differ as to essential elements and defenses. The imprecise — and I dare say incorrect — characterization of the offense of first degree murder in this case in no way informed appellant of that crime.
What seems to be at work in this case is an elusive standard for determining the sufficiency of charging documents in the context of Article 21 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights. In Williams v. State, 302 Md. 787, 490 A.2d 1277 (1985), the lead case in this area for this Term, *30the Court articulated its “common parlance” approach to the sufficiency of charging documents. Williams involved a charging document that purported to charge the common law offense of armed robbery by alleging that the defendant “did rob” the victim of certain personal property. Although the charging document omitted the essential mental element of that common law offense, and despite the State’s failure to comply with the statutory short form for that offense, the Williams Court nonetheless determined that the charging document passed constitutional muster under Article 21. The majority in Williams based this conclusion on the theory that the “common parlance” of “did rob” inferentially supplied the omitted mental element for armed robbery.
Most recently, in Jones v. State, 303 Md. 323, 493 A.2d 1062 (1985), the Court once again employed its common parlance approach in a case involving a constitutional challenge to the legal sufficiency of the statutory form of charging document for the crime of theft. The Jones Court stated that “[i]n common parlance, to steal is to take something that does not belong to you.” Id. at 340, 493 A.2d at 1070. The Court then concluded:
To steal property is to take it with an intent to deprive the owner of the rights and benefits of ownership.... In the context of § 344(a), the word “steal” encompasses all categories of conduct by which theft can be committed under the five subsections of § 342. It plainly implies the element of scienter; it includes wilfullness and knowledge. To charge, as here, that the accused “did steal,” on a designated date, described personal property of a named victim of a specified value is properly to characterize the crime of theft under § 342 and to sufficiently set forth those elements of the offense as fairly apprise the accused of the crime charged.
Id. at 340, 493 A.2d at 1070-71.
Against this backdrop of precedent, one searches today’s opinion in vain to find reference to, let alone application of, the Court’s newly minted common parlance approach. This *31strange silence is largely understandable because it allows the Court to reach the result it so earnestly seeks. More to the point, application of the common parlance approach to the case sub judice would require the Court to vacate the appellant’s conviction because the common parlance of the language used in the indictment does not remotely characterize the offense of first degree murder. The Court, however, tells us that “[t]he test for determining whether the circuit court possessed jurisdiction over the offense charged ... is not ... whether the recital in the indictment that the killing was willful, deliberate and premeditated constituted the substantial equivalence of an allegation of malice and murder.” Instead, we learn that “in ascertaining the existence of jurisdiction in the circuit court, we consider the indictment in its entirety.” This test is no test at all, but is instead a classic example of the Court’s standardless and shifting approach to the sufficiency of charging documents.
II
I have previously expressed my views concerning the sufficiency of charging documents at common law and under the statutory short forms, and I need not recount those views in detail today. See Delclef v. State, 303 Md. 344, 347, 493 A.2d 1073, 1074 (1985) (Cole, J., concurring); Jones v. State, supra, 303 Md. at 342, 493 A.2d at 1071 (Cole, J., concurring); Hall v. State, 302 Md. 806, 809, 490 A.2d 1287, 1288 (1985) (Cole, J., dissenting); Williams v. State, supra, 302 Md. at 794, 490 A.2d at 1280 (Cole, J., dissenting). Nevertheless, a few comments are in order.
As an initial matter, this case resembles Williams in several significant respects. First, the offenses purportedly charged in both cases are common law offenses. Second, in attempting to charge these offenses the State in both cases omitted an essential element and, in so doing, failed to charge the offenses at common law. Third, the State in both cases failed to comply substantially with the statutory short form for these common law offenses. A fuller expía*32nation of the last two observations makes clear my disagreement with the majority.
For over a century this Court has required the State to include all the “essential” or “material” elements of the crime in the charging document so as to guard against a wrongful prosecution and to put the defendant on notice of what he is called upon to defend. See, e.g., Robinson v. State, 298 Md. 193, 202, 468 A.2d 328, 333 (1983); Deckard v. State, 38 Md. 186, 201 (1873); see also Williams v. State, supra, 302 Md. at 795-96, 490 A.2d at 1281-82 (listing cases). This Court has also stated in an unbroken line of cases that “malice aforethought” is an essential or material element of the common law offense of murder. See, e.g., Gladden v. State, 273 Md. 383, 388, 330 A.2d 176, 179 (1974); Faulcon v. State, 211 Md. 249, 257, 126 A.2d 858, 862 (1956); Chisley v. State, 202 Md. 87, 104-05, 95 A.2d 577, 585 (1953). Here, without as much as a backward look, the Court ignores this precedent and concludes that an indictment omitting the essential element of “malice aforethought” validly charges first degree murder.
The Court compounds its error by not recognizing the common law requirement that an indictment for murder must contain the averment that the accused “murdered” the victim. See, e.g., 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Law of England *307 (W. Lewis ed. 1922) (in an indictment for murder at common law “it is necessary to say that the party indicted ‘murdered,’ not ‘killed,’ or ‘slew,’ the other[.]”). Although I concede that the policy of modern courts has been to dispense with extremely technical early common law pleading rules, it nonetheless remains that a charging document must allege fully the essential elements of the offense charged. See State v. Wheatley, 192 Md. 44, 50, 63 A.2d 644, 647 (1949). In concert with this policy, it is plain to me that the indictment here is jurisdictionally defective because it omits the essential element of malice aforethought. In light of the indictment’s failure to satisfy the common law requirements for alleging murder, the State must necessarily place exclusive reliance upon the *33statutory short form for murder contained in § 616 of Art. 27. It is to this statute that I now turn.
Nearly eighty years ago the General Assembly first enacted a statutory short form for murder. 1906 Md.Laws 248. This short form, now codified at § 616 of Art. 27, provides in its entirety:
In any indictment for murder or manslaughter, or for being an accessory thereto, it shall not be necessary to set forth the manner or means of death. It shall be sufficient to use a formula substantially to the following effect: “That A.B., on.....day of.....nineteen hundred and....., at the county aforesaid, feloniously (wilfully and of deliberately premeditated malice aforethought) did kill (and murder) C.D. against the peace, government and dignity of the State.”
The indictment in the case sub judice does not track the statutory short form. Specifically, the indictment omits the words “malice aforethought,” “murder,” and “feloniously.” Because it is not necessary to use the word “feloniously” to charge a felony in a charging document,3 the issue narrows to whether the omission of “malice aforethought” and “murder” is fatal to the indictment. In my view, these omissions are fatal for the simple reason that no other language in the indictment conveys the meaning of those essential elements. As Chief Judge Gilbert wrote for the Court of Special Appeals in a case strikingly similar to the one here, “[mjissing from the indictment is that indispensable ingredient of murder — malice.... Malice, which may be express or implied, has been defined as meaning ‘the intentional doing of a wrongful act to another without legal excuse or justification/ ” Brown v. State, 44 Md.App. 71, 78, 410 A.2d 17, 22 (1979) (citation omitted; emphasis in original) (quoting Gladden v. State, supra, 273 Md. at 388, 330 A.2d at 179). Furthermore, “murder” is a term of art *34that has a distinct meaning. The phrase “kill and slay” is not substantially equivalent to “murder,” as the General Assembly made indelibly clear by directing that the word “murder” be used in an indictment for murder under § 616.
This conclusion is fortified when one considers that § 616 encompasses both murder and manslaughter. To charge murder under that section, the prosecutor must resort to the parenthetical language. By contrast, a manslaughter indictment under § 616 does not include the parenthetical language. Here, the State fashioned an amalgam under § 616 that smacks of a hit and miss approach, with the result that it failed to charge a cognizable offense under Maryland law. As the Brown Court correctly observed, “[tjhere are no degrees of ‘kill and slay.’ Homicide, per se, is not punishable at law as a crime. Ergo, the indictment did not charge a crime.” Brown v. State, supra, 44 Md. App. at 79, 410 A.2d at 22; see also Pfeiffer v. State, 44 Md.App. 49, 58-59, 407 A.2d 354, 359 (1979) (on motion for reconsideration) (failure to allege malice in murder indictment constitutes reversible error because malice is an essential element of that crime). By upholding this indictment, the Court once again encourages prosecutors to engage in slipshod charging practices with impunity at the expense of one of the most basic constitutional rights afforded an accused.
Ill
Upon the Court’s adoption of its newly found common parlance approach in Williams, I forecast that the Court would eventually “sanction a murder conviction based upon an indictment omitting the essential element of ‘malice.’ ” Williams v. State, supra, 302 Md. at 802, 490 A.2d at 1285 (Cole, J., dissenting). Today the Court in fact sanctions such a conviction, but does so under an approach that seemingly departs from that adopted in Williams. In so doing, the Court mocks its unwillingness in Ayre “to wash Article 21 of its informative substance,” Ayre v. State, supra, 291 Md. at 169, 433 A.2d at 1158, and sets us upon a *35standardless course in determining whether a charging document comports with the dictates of Article 21.
Because the indictment in the instant case fails to characterize the offense of first degree murder, it is fatally defective and can thus be challenged by the appellant at any time. Accordingly, I would affirm the decision of the Court of Special Appeals.

. Article 21 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights provides "[t]hat in all criminal prosecutions, every man hath a right to be informed of the accusation against him; to have a copy of the Indictment, or charge, in due time (if required) to prepare for his defence[.]”

. The indictment filed in this case charged that appellant "did wilfully and deliberately, with premeditation kill and slay Elizabeth Ann Metzler, 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 (Common Law and Art. 27, Sec. 407-410)."

. Maryland Rule 4-202(d) provides that "[i]t is not necessary to use the word ‘feloniously’ or ‘unlawfully’ to charge a felony or misdemeanor in a charging document.”