Moosavi v. State
Decision Date | 30 August 1999 |
Docket Number | No. 24,24 |
Citation | 736 A.2d 285,355 Md. 651 |
Parties | Mohammed MOOSAVI v. STATE of Maryland. |
Court | Maryland 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.
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.
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 he—he 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:
* * *
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:
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):
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
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