Slagle v. State

• Decision Date: 19 July 1966
• Docket Number: No. 182,182
• Parties: Stanley Norman SLAGLE v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 435

243 Md. 435

221 A.2d 641

Stanley Norman SLAGLE v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 182.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

July 19, 1966.

Charles A. Reese, Ellicott City, for appellant.

Thomas B. Finan, Atty. Gen., Julius A. Romano, Asst. Atty. Gen., Baltimore, and J. Thomas Nissel, State's Atty. for Howard County, Ellicott City, for appellee.

Before HAMMOND, MARBURY, OPPENHEIMER, and BARNES, JJ., and MATTHEW S. EVANS, Special Judge.

EVANS, Judge.

The appellant, Stanley Norman Slagle, was convicted of escape from the Clifton T. Perkins State Hospital by a jury in the Circuit Court for Howard County and was sentenced to five years in the Maryland House of Correction by the Honorable James Macgill on 24 March 1965.

The sole contention here made is that the Clifton T. Perkins State Hospital is not a place of confinement within the meaning of Code (1957), Article 27, Section 139 as amended, so as to constitute an escape therefrom a criminal offense.

In 1963, the appellant was in the Baltimore City Jail awaiting trial under an indictment charging him with armed robbery. Upon interposing the defense of insanity by formal pleas, he was transferred, under court order, to the Clifton T. Perkins State Hospital where he was to undergo examination by the Department of Mental Hygiene in accordance with the provisions of Article 59, Sections 7, 9 and 11 of the Code. The order provided for the return of the appellant to the Baltimore City Jail upon completion of the examination.

On 13 September 1963, the appellant and a fellow inmate, Thomas Hadder, left the hospital after Hadder had cut and removed the steel window bars in his room with hacksaw blades obtained from a hospital security attendant. The attendant later told investigating officers of his role in the escape and, upon information received from him, the police apprehended the appellant in Baltimore on 21 September 1963.

An information was then filed by the State's Attorney for Howard County charging the appellant with escape. Appellant's motion to dismiss and motions for a judgment of acquittal, based on the contention that Clifton T. Perkins was not a place of confinement, were overruled.

The appellant contends that, under the rules of statutory construction, this Court cannot hold that Clifton T. Perkins State Hospital is a place of confinement within the meaning of Article 27, Section 139 of the Annotated Code of Maryland. This article provides:

'If any offender or person legally detained and confined in the penitentiary, or jail, or house of correction, or reformatory, or station house, or any other place of confinement (emphasis supplied), in this State, shall escape, he shall, on conviction thereof by the Criminal Court of Baltimore City or by the circuit court of the county in which the escape takes place, be sentenced to confinement in the penitentiary, jail or house of correction for such additional period, not exceeding ten years, as the court may adjudge. However, for escapes from the reformatory for males which have not involved an assault, the sentence shall not exceed confinement for three years.'

This Court recently held in Caparella v. State, 214 Md. 355, 135 A.2d 311, that the Patuxent Institution was sufficiently analogous to a reformatory to be included within the phrase 'other place of confinement.'

In Johnson v. Warden, 196 Md. 672, 75 A.2d 843, a prisoner working on a privately owned farm outside the reformatory was deemed legally confined in the reformatory. Likewise, an escape from the Sandy Point Correctional Camp was held to constitute an escape from the House of Correction. Taylor v. State, 229 Md. 128, 182 A.2d 52.

In Best v. Warden, 235 Md. 633, 201 A.2d 490, a prisoner who had been taken to a hospital committed the crime of escape by walking off after his guard had gone to make a telephone call. His contention that an escape was impossible since he was left unguarded and the hospital was not a 'place of confinement' was held to be without merit. An escape from the hospital was an escape from the penitentiary where he had been committed. See ...