Poe v. State

• Decision Date: 01 September 1995
• Docket Number: No. 52,52
• Citation: 341 Md. 523,671 A.2d 501
• Parties: James Allen POE v. STATE of Maryland. ,
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 523

341 Md. 523

671 A.2d 501

James Allen POE v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 52, Sept. Term, 1995.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Feb. 9, 1996.

M. Gordon Tayback, Baltimore, for Petitioner.

Annabelle L. Lisic, Assistant Attorney General, (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Attorney General, on brief), Baltimore, for Respondent.

Argued before MURPHY, C.J., and ELDRIDGE, RODOWSKY, CHASANOW, KARWACKI, BELL and RAKER, JJ.

CHASANOW, Judge.

The primary issue we are called upon to determine in this case is whether the doctrine of transferred intent applies when a defendant, intending to kill one person, shoots and wounds that person, but the shot passes through the intended victim and kills an unintended victim. We are also asked to decide whether the trial court properly sentenced Petitioner. For the reasons set forth below, we find that the trial court properly applied the doctrine of transferred intent in the instant case, and find no error in Petitioner's sentence. Accordingly, we uphold Petitioner's conviction and affirm the Court of Special Appeals.

I.

Petitioner James Allen Poe (Mr. Poe or the defendant) was charged in the Circuit Court for Cecil County with first degree murder of Kimberly Rice (Kimberly), an innocent bystander, and first degree attempted murder of his intended victim Karen Poe (Ms. Poe), his estranged wife. The defendant was convicted by a jury before the Honorable Donaldson C. Cole, Jr. of the foregoing charges.

On August 10, 1993, Mr. Poe drove to the home of Ms. Poe in order to visit with their four children. Although there was no formal visitation agreement, Ms. Poe generally allowed Mr. Poe to visit with the children whenever he wanted. On that day, however, Ms. Poe heard that Mr. Poe planned to take the children to Florida with his new girlfriend and refused to allow Mr. Poe to take the children. An argument ensued in front of the house. Two adults and eight children were present at the time: Donna Biggs, Ms. Poe's half sister; Biggs's boyfriend, Michael Sponseller; the Poe's four children; two children of Ms. Poe's boyfriend; and two children of Ms. Poe's sister, Virginia Sorrell.

According to the testimony of adults who witnessed the argument, Ms. Poe announced that she was going to call the police. She walked into the house, called 911 and asked the police to come to the house to remove Mr. Poe from the premises. Testimony at trial revealed that as Ms. Poe walked into the house, Mr. Poe walked toward the trunk of his car. Ms. Poe, Donna Biggs, and Michael Sponseller all observed Mr. Poe open the trunk of his car and remove a 12-gauge shotgun. Michael Sponseller testified that Ms. Poe yelled from inside the house, " 'I don't have to take this anymore.' " Several witnesses testified that at that moment, Mr. Poe pointed his shotgun toward the door and shouted, " 'Take this, bitch'."

At least one shot was fired into the house, hitting both Ms. Poe and Kimberly, the six year old daughter of Ms. Poe's boyfriend, who was apparently standing behind Ms. Poe. The 50 caliber lead slug passed through the front screen door, Ms. Poe's arm, Kimberly's head, and out the wooden back door. The single shot inflicted a nonfatal wound in Ms. Poe, but killed Kimberly instantly.

Michael Sponseller called 911, and gave Mr. Poe's name and a description of his car to the police as he watched the defendant drive away from the scene. Mr. Poe threw the shotgun out of the car window to the side of the road nearby and drove toward Pennsylvania. He was stopped by the Pennsylvania State Police in Chester County, Pennsylvania based on a bulletin given over a police radio broadcast describing Mr. Poe's car. As he was handcuffed, Mr. Poe blurted out that what he had done was an accident and that he loved kids. While being transported to the police barracks nearby, Mr. Poe blurted out that he " 'was holding the gun in the air and the gun went off.' "

At the close of all the evidence at trial, Judge Cole instructed the jury on the doctrine of transferred intent as it applied to the homicide of Kimberly. Judge Cole explained to the jury that if they believed that the defendant willfully, deliberately and with premeditation intended to kill Ms. Poe, then they could find Mr. Poe guilty of first degree murder of Kimberly. In other words, if the jury would have convicted Mr. Poe of first degree murder of Ms. Poe had she died as a result of the shot, they could convict Mr. Poe of first degree murder of Kimberly, because the intent to kill Ms. Poe transfers to Kimberly, the unintended victim. The jury found the defendant guilty of first degree murder of Kimberly and guilty of attempted first degree murder of Ms. Poe.

At the defendant's sentencing hearing, Judge Cole heard statements from the defendant, members of his family, and members of Kimberly's family, in addition to reading several letters on behalf of the defendant. The trial judge weighed the evidence, the testimony, the seriousness of the crimes, the impact they had upon the families, and the fact that Mr. Poe had no prior criminal record. The judge also made reference to his belief in "good old-fashioned law and order [and] the Bible." The judge then sentenced Mr. Poe to a term of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for the murder of Kimberly and a consecutive 30-year sentence for the attempted murder of his estranged wife.

Mr. Poe's convictions were affirmed by the Court of Special Appeals. Poe v. State, 103 Md.App. 136, 652 A.2d 1164 (1994). We granted certiorari to consider the appropriateness of the trial court's instructions on the doctrine of transferred intent and the trial judge's reference to the Bible in sentencing the defendant.

II.

The trial court instructed the jury on the doctrine of transferred intent in pertinent part as follows "If I intend to kill ... Karen in this case, and my mark's not good, or bullet goes through, and I kill somebody else, and they die instead of Karen, that's still first degree murder on the second one because the law does not protect a person who has a bad aim or is unfortunate enough to have the bullet go through the first. That is called transferred intent. The intent follows the bullet."

Mr. Poe contends on appeal that the lower courts erred in ruling that the doctrine of transferred intent applies where a defendant intends to kill A, shoots and wounds A, but kills B, an unintended victim, by that same shot. ¹ Essentially, Mr. Poe argues that because he intended to and did shoot Ms. Poe and was convicted of her attempted murder, there is no intent left to transfer to Kimberly, the unintended victim. The defendant contends that he "used up" all of his intent on Ms. Poe, his targeted victim. In his brief Mr. Poe states:

"[W]hat is clear is that the [defendant] was charged with, and convicted of, attempted murder (first degree) of Karen Poe. The crime of attempted murder was complete.

As the State presented the evidence against the [defendant], and as the jury so found in its decision, the [defendant] deliberately, with premeditation, intended to kill his wife when he fired a shotgun shell at her. Indeed, the shell did hit her; she was lucky to have survived. The same mens rea was involved whether Karen Poe lived or died. The [defendant] had accomplished the intended physical result of shooting his wife. * * * There was no intent left to transfer from Karen Poe to Kimberly Rice."

We do not agree. The defendant is correct that "the crime of attempted murder [of Ms. Poe] was complete" when he fired the shotgun at her. The defendant fails to recognize, however, that his intent was to murder, not to attempt to murder. Since Mr. Poe killed Kimberly, his intent to murder was "transferred" from Ms. Poe to Kimberly. We agree with the State that the passing of the bullet through the arm of the intended victim before killing the unintended victim does not alter or negate the application of the doctrine of transferred intent. A fortiori, this is a classic case of transferred intent.

In Ford v. State, 330 Md. 682, 625 A.2d 984 (1993), our most recent case interpreting the doctrine of transferred intent, we said that transferred intent links a defendant's mens rea as to the intended victim, with the killing of an unintended victim, and, in effect, "makes a whole crime out of two component halves." 330 Md. at 710, 625 A.2d at 997. The obvious purpose behind this doctrine is to prevent a defendant from escaping liability for a murder in which every element has been committed, but there is an unintended victim. See Ford, 330 Md. at 714, 625 A.2d at 999.

We stated in Ford that transferred intent does not apply to attempted murder. Id. (disapproving application of the doctrine of transferred intent to attempted murder in State v. Wilson, 313 Md. 600, 546 A.2d 1041 (1988)). The doctrine of transferred intent is, of course, pure legal fiction. 1 WAYNE R. LAFAVE AND AUSTIN W. SCOTT, JR., SUBSTANTIVE CRIMINAL LAW § 3.12(d), at 399 (2d ed.1986). It is analogous to the doctrine of felony murder which is also a legal fiction. Both doctrines are used to impose criminal liability for unintended deaths. See Gladden v. State, 273 Md. 383, 404, 330 A.2d 176, 188 (1974) ("In homicide cases ... the doctrine of 'transferred intent' performs a function equivalent to that applied under the felony-murder rule." (Footnote omitted)). Clearly, there is no crime of attempted felony murder when no death occurs during the course of a felony. Bruce v. State, 317 Md. 642, 646-47, 566 A.2d 103, 105 (1989). Likewise, the doctrine of transferred intent does not apply to attempted murder when there is no death.

Petitioner tries to unduly stretch our holding in Ford that the doctrine of transferred intent is inapplicable to attempted murder. We reject Poe's argument that because he completed the crime of attempted murder of his intended victim, the doctrine of transferred intent does not apply to the death of another person. In Ford, we...