Moosavi v. State

Decision Date30 August 1999
Docket NumberNo. 24,24
Citation736 A.2d 285,355 Md. 651
PartiesMohammed MOOSAVI v. STATE of Maryland.
CourtMaryland Court of Appeals

Nancy S. Forster, Asst. Public Defender (Stephen E. Harris, Public Defender, on brief), Baltimore, for petitioner.

Emmet Davitt, Asst. Atty. Gen. (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Atty. Gen., on brief), Baltimore, for respondent.

Argued before BELL, C.J., and ELDRIDGE, RODOWSKY, CHASANOW1, RAKER, WILNER and CATHELL, JJ.

ELDRIDGE, Judge.

We granted a petition for a writ of certiorari in this case to determine whether the petitioner, Mohammed Moosavi, was properly convicted under Maryland Code (1957, 1996 Repl. Vol.), Article 27, § 151A, which punishes the transmittal of false statements or rumors about the location or detonation of a bomb or explosive.

I.

The evidence at Moosavi's trial in the Circuit Court for Frederick County disclosed the following facts. Moosavi, a retired elementary school teacher, had a credit card account with Chevy Chase Bank. Moosavi disputed a charge on his credit card for $30 membership dues to Columbia House Video. Evidently, he paid $30 for a three year membership in Columbia House Video, but the club canceled his membership after only three months. He wrote a letter to the bank dated July 14, 1995, detailing his dispute. Apparently, when he heard nothing from the bank, he contacted someone at the bank. Next, in an August 3, 1995, letter to Moosavi, the Chevy Chase Bank charge back department claimed that it did not receive his July 14th letter. Moosavi was told that he would have to write another letter, which he did, dated August 28, 1995.

Moosavi also telephoned the bank in regard to the disputed charge. He called the bank three times on August 30, 1995. When the customer service representative told Moosavi that he would have to send a detailed letter in order to have his disputed charge resolved, he refused and then asked to speak to a supervisor. He was transferred to Rona Bowers, the supervisor of the credit card division. Bowers testified that Moosavi was "irate" and "very angry" about the "procedure that the customer service representative told him he needed to follow in order to have a dispute resolved from his Chevy Chase account." Bowers further testified:

"A. He just started stating that hehe kept insisting that he wanted the charges taken off of his account. I explained to him in order for that to happen—I repeated myself—

Q. Uh-huh.

A. In order for that to happen, you must submit the documents. He began—he was very angry and somewhere in the conversation, that's when he began to state that he would blow up Chevy Chase Bank if we didn't do what he wanted him to—what he wanted done.

Q. Okay. Did he tell you where he was going to blow up the bank?

A. He asked—he stated, I'm going to blow up the bank. Well, I'm going to blow up Chevy Chase Bank. Where are you? In Frederick?

Q. And then—

A. And I asked him, well when would you blow up the bank? And he said probably on a Sunday."

Bowers then contacted the Chevy Chase Bank security department and informed someone in the department of Moosavi's statement. Moosavi denied ever making the statement to Bowers about blowing up the bank. The Chevy Chase Bank building in Frederick, Maryland, was not bombed.

Assistant State's Attorney Theresa Martinez Rivera testified that Moosavi came into her office without an appointment sometime in mid-October 1995. She advised Moosavi, who was not then represented by an attorney, that he needed a defense attorney and that he should not discuss the matter with her because she was a prosecutor. Despite her repeated efforts to discourage Moosavi from speaking with her about the matter, she said that "he just kept telling me, you know, it's the bank's fault because he—there was a discrepancy in their account, and that he was—the reason why he called in the bomb threat was because he was very—he was very angry with the bank." The administrative assistant in the State's Attorneys Office, Ginger Fogle, was present during the conversation between Moosavi and Rivera and stated that she heard Moosavi say "well, it's just all a big mistake, I didn't mean what I said, I didn't mean it when I said I was going to blow the building up, I was just mad." Moosavi denied ever making these statements to Rivera.

Moosavi was charged under Code (1957, 1996 Repl. Vol.), Article 27, § 151A, which provides as follows:

"151A. False statement or rumor as to bomb.

A person is guilty of a misdemeanor if, knowing the statement or rumor to be false, he circulates or transmits to another or others, with intent that it be acted upon, a statement or rumor, written, printed, or by word of mouth, concerning the location or possible detonation of a bomb or other explosive."

* * *

A jury trial was held on October 21 and 22, 1996, in the Circuit Court for Frederick County. At the conclusion of the State's evidence, Moosavi, by his counsel, made a motion for judgment of acquittal. He argued that the alleged criminal statement was not covered by § 151A. Instead, Moosavi asserted that if this statement was punishable at all, it was more appropriately covered by Code (1957, 1996 Repl. Vol.), Article 27, § 9, which states as follows:

"§ 9. Threats of Arson.

(a) In general.—A person may not threaten either verbally or in writing to:

(1) Set fire to or burn a structure; or

(2) Explode a destructive explosive device ... in, on, or under a structure."

* * *

In support of his motion, Moosavi's attorney argued that

"151A is—a person is guilty of a misdemeanor if, knowing the statement or rumor to be false, he circulates it, or transmits to another, or others, with the intent that it be acted upon. A statement, or rumor, written, printed, or by word of mouth concerning the location or possible detonation of a bomb or other explosive. It's very precise. If my client did threaten to explode a device, he'd be subject by [§ 9], which makes it very clear—a person may not threaten either verbally, or in writing, to explode an—a destructive explosive device.... That's the matter that we have according to the State's case. But 151A makes it—a part of this is that knowing the statement or rumor to be false, circulating that, transmitting that.... There has been no evidence whatsoever that this was knowingly false—knowing at the time that it was made that it was knowingly false. And that's part of this case. That's part of this charge. That's part of this offense.... And that's unmistakably part of 151A. It—it fits very well within [§ 9], but he's not charged with that."

The circuit court denied the motion for judgment of acquittal.

At the conclusion of all of the evidence in the case, Moosavi again made a motion for judgment of acquittal, asserting that the evidence was insufficient to convict him under § 151A. He renewed the argument that the alleged offense, making a threat to explode a bomb, is more appropriately covered by § 9 than by § 151A. The court again denied the motion for judgment of acquittal. The jury found Moosavi guilty of making a false statement as to a bomb. The court sentenced him to thirty days in jail, suspended the sentence, and imposed two years of unsupervised probation.

Moosavi appealed his conviction to the Court of Special Appeals. He argued, inter alia, that the evidence was insufficient to sustain the guilty verdict because "[u]nder § 151A, the specific intent to have the threat acted upon is a required element of the crime." (Moosavi's brief in the Court of Special Appeals at 6). Moosavi contended that this intent requirement "is obviously included in the statute to prevent spontaneous, obviously idle statements such as the one alleged in the instant case from being charged as serious bomb threats." (Ibid.).

The Court of Special Appeals affirmed Moosavi's conviction, holding that the evidence of intent was sufficient. Moosavi v. State, 118 Md.App. 683, 703 A.2d 1302 (1998). Despite its own misgivings about the evidence with regard to intent, the Court of Special Appeals held that it would not interfere with the "exclusive prerogative of the fact finders" to "permissibly" infer that Moosavi "meant to do exactly what he said he was going to do." 118 Md.App. at 688, 691, 695, 703 A.2d at 1305, 1306, 1308.2

Nevertheless, the Court of Special Appeals stated that, for another reason, it would have found the evidence to be legally insufficient with respect to the crime charged under § 151A had Moosavi raised the issue on appeal. The appellate court explained (118 Md.App. at 700, 703 A.2d at 1310):

"151A was not even of the type of offense arguably perpetrated by the appellant. There was no false statement or rumor already in existence that he knew to be false and that he circulated to others with the intent that the Chevy Chase Bank, for instance, be evacuated. That is the type of thing that is meant by § 151A's `with the intent that [the false rumor] be acted upon.' The evidence simply did not fit the crime charged (§ 151A) and, therefore, was legally insufficient to support the conviction."

The Court of Special Appeals concluded that the "gravamen of § 151A is the passing on or the transmitting of a false report or a false rumor with respect to the existing location and/or the possible detonation of an existing bomb." 118 Md.App. at 697-698,703 A.2d at 1309. The appellate court stated that clearly "§ 151A does not involve the actual making of a threat by the would-be perpetrator to explode a bomb at some future time." Ibid. Rather, the purpose of § 151A, according to the Court of Special Appeals, is to target

"the malicious prankster who perpetrates expensive and disruptive hoaxes in the form of bomb scares. The social harm, in addition to the very real fear engendered, is the hundreds and thousands of man hours that are lost as schools, office buildings, and courthouses are evacuated, with hundreds of employees forced to stand idly on the street while the...

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