Court Opinion

ID: 9695213
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:12:19.383808+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:09.136737
License: Public Domain

WILNER, Judge,
concurring and dissenting.
I concur in those parts of the majority opinion and mandate that affirm the judgments rendered against appellant. I dissent, however, from the reversal of appellant’s conviction under art. 27, § 150. In my opinion, the majority has simply misread that statute.
Art. 27, § 150 provides, in pertinent part, that:
“Any person who makes a false statement, report or complaint, or who causes a false statement, report or 'complaint to be made, to any peace or police officer of this State, or of any county, city or other political subdivision of this State, knowing the same, or any material part thereof, to be false and with intent to deceive and with intent to cause an investigation or other action to be taken as a result thereof, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor____”
(Emphasis added.) It is, of course, the interpretation of the emphasized phrase, “or other action to be taken,” which is at the center of the controversy here.
The majority claims, with no real support, that the Legislature intended merely to codify the English case of The *644King v. Manley [1933] 1 K.B. 529, 534-35 (C.C.A.1932), when it enacted § 150. Finding such an intention, the majority has limited the application of § 150 to “the making of false reports to the police which cause the police to conduct investigations that divert them from their proper duties of preventing crime and investigating actual incidents of crime.” In so construing the statute, the majority either ignores or, by judicial fiat, simply excises a portion of that statute.
I agree that, when we are called upon to construe a statute, we must effectuate the intent of the Legislature. Kaczorowski v. City of Baltimore, 309 Md. 505, 525 A.2d 628 (1987). I cannot agree, however, that the Legislature intended to limit § 150 to Manley-type situations. There is simply no support for such a conclusion.
The plain wording of § 150 does not support that intention. The statute clearly states “investigation or other action.” If the Legislature had intended to limit the section to false statements that cause investigations, it could have said so. It did not have to add the additional language “or other action.” From the plain wording of the statute, then, the Legislature intended to make a person criminally responsible if he or she gave a police officer a false statement with intent to deceive and with intent to cause either (1) an investigation or (2) other action.
Nor is there any legislative history to support the majority’s conclusion that § 150 is no more than a codification of Manley. The majority points to the coincidence of the circulation of the Model Penal Code’s 1957 Draft, which included § 241.5, and the Legislature’s consideration of § 150. Section 241.5, entitled “False Reports to Law Enforcement Authorities,” provides:
“(1) Falsely Incriminating Another. A person who knowingly gives false information to any law enforcement officer with purpose to implicate another commits a misdemeanor.
*645(2) Fictitious Reports. A person commits a petty misdemeanor if he:
(a) reports to law enforcement authorities an offense or other incident within their concern knowing that it did not occur; or
(b) pretends to furnish such authorities with information relating to an offense or incident when he knows he has no information relating to such offense or incident.”
If § 241.5 is, as the majority asserts, only a codification of Manley, I simply point to the fact that the Legislature did not adopt it despite the opportunity. Rather, it wrote and passed its own, significantly different, statute. While I agree that § 150 encompasses Manley,1 it also exceeds it by making criminal false statements, complaints or reports made to the police with the intent to cause them to take some type of action on it.
Not only is there no support for the majority’s construction of § 150, that construction violates another canon of statutory construction. The Court of Appeals has repeatedly cautioned that we are to construe a statute, whenever reasonably possible, so that no word, clause, sentence or phrase is rendered surplusage, superfluous, meaningless, or nugatory. Management Personnel Serv. v. Sandefur, 300 Md. 332, 341, 478 A.2d 310 (1984).
*646To construe § 150 to include false statements made to induce police action other than an investigation is entirely reasonable.' The Maryland Code is replete with statutes prohibiting the making of false statements in certain situations. See Md.Code Ann. Health Occ. art., §§ 2-403, 12-702, 14-703, 18-404; Md.Code Ann.Fin.Inst. art., §§ 13-140, 13-233.4; Md.Code Ann.Transp. art., § 20-108; Md.Code Ann. art. 56, § 603; Md.Code Ann. art. 95A, § 17.
With this construction in mind, we turn to the question of whether appellant’s action violated § 150. The processing officer testified that he spent “45 minutes to a hour to track down all the different names and dates of birth he gave us.” The only possible reason for appellant’s falsehoods was to hinder the police. While not all lies- which cause police action may necessarily fall within the ambit of the statute, appellant’s lies did cause the type of action, if not an investigation, contemplated by § 150.

. Arguably, § 151 is more applicable to Manley situations than § 150. Section 151 provides:
“Any person who makes a false statement or report of the commission of a crime or of the existence of any condition imminently dangerous to public health or safety, or causes such a false statement or report to be made, to any official or agency of this State, or of any county, city or other political subdivision of this State, knowing the same, or any material part thereof, to be false and with intent that such official or agency investigate, consider or take action in connection with such statement or report, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and upon conviction shall be subject to a fine of not more than five hundred dollars ($500.00), or be imprisoned not more than six (6) months, or be both fined and imprisoned, in the discretion of the court.”