Trindle v. State

• Decision Date: 01 September 1990
• Docket Number: No. 127,127
• Citation: 326 Md. 25,602 A.2d 1232
• Parties: William Orville TRINDLE, III and Sharon Marcus, v. STATE of Maryland
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 25

326 Md. 25

602 A.2d 1232

William Orville TRINDLE, III and Sharon Marcus, v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 127 Sept. Term, 1990.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

March 16, 1992.

Elise Davis, Chestertown, for appellant.

Gary E. Bair, Asst. Bar Counsel (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Attorney General, both on brief), Baltimore, for appellee.

Argued before MURPHY, C.J., ELDRIDGE, RODOWSKY, McAULIFFE, CHASANOW and KARWACKI, JJ., and MARVIN H. SMITH, Judge of the Court of Appeals (retired,) Specially Assigned.

KARWACKI, Judge.

A jury in the Circuit Court for Kent County (Boyer, J.) convicted William Orville Trindle, III, of violating Maryland Code (1984), § 9-305 of the Family Law Article ¹ and md.code (1957, 1987 Repl.Vol.) Article 27, § 2. ² Sharon Marcus, who was tried jointly with Trindle, was also convicted of violating Article 27, § 2. Following their sentencing, both Trindle and Marcus appealed those judgments to the Court of Special Appeals. Before the cases were heard by the intermediate appellate court, we issued a writ of certiorari on our own motion.

The prosecution of Trindle and Marcus was based upon facts that were undisputed at trial.

Trindle and his wife, Alexa Matthai, separated in August of 1987. Matthai was granted a limited divorce by the Circuit Court for Kent County on December 31, 1987. Custody of their three children, Jamila (born on January 1, 1980), Jamal (born on December 2, 1981), and Alia (born on January 6, 1985), was granted to Matthai. Trindle was allowed reasonable visitation with his children.

Matthai continued to reside in the family home at Betterton in Kent County with the children. On March 1, 1989, the Circuit Court for Kent County entered a judgment absolutely divorcing Trindle and Matthai. The court continued the custody of the children in Matthai, allowing Trindle reasonable visitation.

During the spring of 1989, Matthai and Trindle had made arrangements for the children to visit Trindle on weekends. He was then living in Overbrook, Pennsylvania, with his new wife, Sharon Marcus. Matthai would drive to Wilmington, Delaware, on Fridays, where she and the children would be met by Trindle. The children would then join their father for the trip to his home. On Sundays, Trindle and Matthai would again meet in Wilmington where Trindle would return the children to their mother for their return to their Kent County home.

At Trindle's request, Matthai agreed to an extended weekend visit from Thursday, May 11, through Sunday, May 14, on Trindle's representation that he was taking the children to a special event in Philadelphia. On May 11, Matthai and the children met Trindle in Wilmington. Trindle agreed to telephone Matthai on the morning of May 14 and advise her of the time they would meet to transfer the children that afternoon. Matthai then returned home.

At 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 13, Trindle telephoned Frances Matthai, an aunt of his ex-wife, who lived in Baltimore County. He asked her to advise Matthai that he would not be returning the children. This information was immediately relayed to Matthai who began a frantic effort to locate Trindle and the children. She enlisted her lawyer and the Maryland State Police to help her, but the whereabouts of Trindle and the children could not be ascertained.

It was later learned that on May 13, Trindle, Marcus and the children left on an airplane from Kennedy Airport in New York to fly to Amman, Jordan. The tickets for this trip had been purchased on April 24, 1989, by Marcus with her own funds.

Soon after the children arrived in Amman, Jordan, Frances Matthai received a telephone call from Jamila, the eldest of the children. Jamila assured her that she and her brother and sister were well and advised her how they could be contacted by telephone. Frances Matthai immediately advised her niece of this information.

Matthai then placed a telephone call to the number she had been furnished. Trindle answered the telephone. When Matthai demanded the return of the children, Trindle advised her that he had conditions to doing so. He insisted that they renegotiate the property settlement that they had reached at the time of their absolute divorce. He also wanted joint custody of their children. Finally, he demanded that she deposit between $6,000 and $8,000 in his checking account. During repeated telephone conversations which Matthai had with Trindle until the end of September, he maintained these positions.

In the course of her attempts to persuade Trindle to return the children, Matthai also had occasion to speak with Marcus. At trial, Matthai recalled that when she spoke with Marcus, "the big question I put to her is 'Why are you financing this? These are my children. And you may think you are not involved but you are the reason that they are there.' Because Bill didn't have any money and she had the money." Matthai's pleas were unavailing.

Corporal Frank Ford of the Maryland State Police, who was assigned the investigation of the abduction of the children, learned on September 25, 1989, from the State Department of the United States that Trindle, Marcus and the children had been deported from Jordan and ordered to return to the United States and that their airplane from Jordan was due to land at Kennedy Airport in New York on September 29. Matthai, in the company of Corporal Ford, traveled to New York to meet that flight. Matthai regained the custody of her children, and Trindle and Marcus were arrested and returned to Kent County.

Trindle

In his appeal Trindle contended that the Circuit Court was without jurisdiction to hear his prosecution for child abduction since none of his conduct took place in Maryland. Alternatively, he asserted that § 9-305 of the Family Law Article "pre-empted the field of parental kidnapping, thereby invalidating his convictions under Article 27, § 2." Prior to his case being argued, Trindle died. Consequently, all issues he had raised are moot. Since at the time of his death he had not had the one appeal from his convictions to which he was statutorily entitled, his convictions and sentences shall be vacated, and the cases remanded with directions to dismiss the criminal informations filed against him as moot. Jones v. State, 302 Md. 153, 158, 486 A.2d 184, 187 (1985).

Marcus

In her appeal, Marcus also challenges the jurisdiction of the trial court and, alternatively, argues that since she was merely an "aider and abettor" of Trindle, she cannot be convicted under Article 27, § 2, because that statute was pre-empted by § 9-305 of the Family Law Article utilized in Trindle's prosecution for parental kidnapping.

(1)

In Pennington v. State, 308 Md. 727, 521 A.2d 1216 (1987), we had occasion to uphold the jurisdiction of a Maryland circuit court to hear a prosecution for obstruction of justice prohibited by Md.Code (1957, 1982 Repl.Vol.) Article 27, § 27. There, Pennington stabbed another woman in the District of Columbia to dissuade her from testifying in a criminal case pending in Baltimore City.

We observed that Md.Code (1974, 1984 Repl.Vol.), § 1-501 of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article provides that each circuit court "has full common-law and equity powers and jurisdiction in all civil and criminal cases within its county, and all the additional powers and jurisdiction conferred by the Constitution and by law, except where by law jurisdiction has been limited or conferred exclusively upon another tribunal." 308 Md. at 728, 521 A.2d at 1216. Since neither the Constitution nor the Code of this State addressed jurisdiction over the offense of obstructing justice, we looked to the common law to resolve the jurisdictional issue. Id. at 729-30, 521 A.2d at 1216-17. We recognized that generally a state may only punish those crimes committed within its territorial limits, but where the various elements of a given offense do not occur entirely within the borders of any one state, it is necessary to decide in which state or states the crime has been committed. Id. at 730, 521 A.2d at 1217. We held that at common law a crime is committed in the state where the criminal act (or omission) occurs if the crime is defined only in terms of that act (or omission) but a crime will also be considered as committed in the state where its intended result occurs if the definition of the crime includes such a result. Id. at 730-34, 521 A.2d at 1217-19. Consequently, we explained that in the latter instance the accused need not be present in the state where the result of his criminal act occurs. See id. at 731-33, 521 A.2d at 1218-19. Applying this rationale to the crime of obstruction of justice, we concluded that causing or attempting to cause a particular result formed an essential ingredient of obstruction of justice proscribed by Article 27, § 27. Id. at 734, 521 A.2d at 1219. Accordingly, since the intended result of Pennington's act in the District of Columbia was the obstruction of justice in Maryland, we held that the circuit court in Maryland had jurisdiction to punish that crime. Id. at 746, 521 A.2d at 1225.

We hold that the Pennington analysis supports the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court for Kent County in the instant case. Marcus's conduct which constituted a violation of Article 27, § 2 consisted of knowingly secreting and harboring Matthai's children with the intent to deprive Matthai of the custody, care and control of those children. It is clear that the intended result of that conduct, i.e. depriving Matthai of custody, forms an essential ingredient of her offense and had its effect in Kent County, Maryland, although the acts which produced that result took place outside of this State. Consequently, under the common law of Maryland interpreted in Pennington, the Maryland circuit court had jurisdiction to try Marcus for the crimes and to punish her for them.

We believe the better reasoned authority elsewhere supports our conclusion. In People v. Harvey, 174 Mich.App. 58, 435...