Williams v. State

• Decision Date: 01 September 1993
• Docket Number: No. 1287,1287
• Citation: 100 Md.App. 468,641 A.2d 990
• Parties: Thomas Lawrence WILLIAMS, Jr. v. STATE of Maryland. ,
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

Page 468

100 Md.App. 468

641 A.2d 990

Thomas Lawrence WILLIAMS, Jr. v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 1287, Sept. Term, 1993.

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland.

June 3, 1994.

Geraldine Kenney Sweeney, Asst. Public Defender (Stephen E. Harris, Public Defender, on the brief), Baltimore, for appellant.

Peter Engel, Asst. Atty. Gen., Crownsville, (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Atty. Gen., Crownsville and Leonard C. Collins, State's Atty. for Charles County, La Plata, on the brief), for appellee.

Argued before MOYLAN, ALPERT and WENNER, JJ.

MOYLAN, Judge.

The appellant, Thomas Lawrence Williams, Jr., was convicted in the Circuit Court for Charles County in a nonjury trial of both 1) assault with intent to maim, disfigure, or disable in contravention of Md.Ann.Code art. 27, § 386 and 2) reckless endangerment in contravention of § 120. He was sentenced to a term of ten years incarceration for the assault with intent to maim and to a concurrent sentence of five years for the reckless endangerment. On this appeal, the appellant raises the single contention that both the conviction for reckless endangerment and the conviction for assault with intent to maim cannot stand.

We agree with the appellant's contention. What remains to be determined is the basis for that agreement, for the appellant offers us two alternative rationales, inviting us to choose one.

The appellant was guilty of a single criminal act in the course of a single criminal episode. The details are inconsequential. Suffice it to say that in the course of a drunken barroom fight between one Kevin Shoemaker and David Williams, the brother and codefendant of the appellant, the appellant briefly intervened in the fight which, until the moment of his intervention, had been at a nonlethal level. The appellant's intervention consisted of walking up to Kevin Shoemaker and stabbing him twice with a knife, once beneath the chin and once in the upper left section of Shoemaker's chest.

It is not disputed that the evidence was legally sufficient to sustain the appellant's conviction for assaulting Kevin Shoemaker with the intent to maim, disfigure, or disable. Section 386 provides, in pertinent part:

If any person shall unlawfully ... and maliciously stab, cut or wound any person ... with intent to maim, disfigure or disable such person, ... every such offender ... shall be guilty of a felony and, upon conviction [is] subject to imprisonment for not more than 15 years.

Md.Ann.Code art. 27, § 386 (1992). From the two acts of stabbing, a fact finder would be permitted to draw the inference that the stabber intended permanently to maim, disfigure, or disable his victim. Hammond v. State, 322 Md. 451, 588 A.2d 345 (1991).

It is not disputed that the evidence was also legally sufficient to sustain the appellant's conviction for recklessly creating a substantial risk of death or serious physical harm to Kevin Shoemaker. Section 120(a) provides:

Any person who recklessly engages in conduct that creates a substantial risk of death or serious physical injury to another person is guilty of the misdemeanor of reckless endangerment and on conviction is subject to a fine not exceeding $5,000 or imprisonment not exceeding 5 years or both.

Md.Ann.Code art. 27, § 120(a) (1992). Stabbing a victim in the neck or lower face and then again in the chest-shoulder area could reasonably be deemed to be an act creating a substantial risk of death or serious physical injury to the victim of the stabbing.

The appellant, however, does not claim that he could not legitimately have been convicted of either offense. He claims, rather, that for reasons quite apart from legal insufficiency, he could not legitimately have been convicted and punished for both offenses.

Were the Convictions Inconsistent?

The first rationale advanced by the appellant is that the two convictions are inconsistent. If that be so, at least one of the two, if not necessarily both, will have to be reversed. State v. Hawkins, 326 Md. 270, 285-291, 604 A.2d 489 (1992). Even in a jury trial, although an inconsistency between one verdict of guilty and another of not guilty will be tolerated, an inconsistency between two verdicts of guilty, such as the appellant alleges here, will not. Johnson v. State, 238 Md. 528, 540-546, 209 A.2d 765 (1965). In a court trial, moreover, inconsistencies of neither variety will be countenanced. Shell v. State, 307 Md. 46, 52-58, 512 A.2d 358 (1986). We are here dealing, of course, both with a court trial and with two verdicts of guilty.

The appellant reasons that the inconsistency inheres in the respective and incompatible mentes reae of the two offenses. The mens rea of assault with intent to maim involves the deliberate intention and willful desire and purpose of inflicting harm on the victim. It is a specific intent crime. As such, it

requires not simply the general intent to do the immediate act with no particular, clear or undifferentiated end in mind but the additional deliberate and conscious purpose or design of accomplishing a very specific and more remote result.

Smith v. State, 41 Md.App. 277, 306, 398 A.2d 426, cert. denied, 284 Md. 748 (1979). See also Shell v. State, 307 Md. 46, 63, 512 A.2d 358 (1986).

The mens rea of reckless endangerment, by contrast, far from intending, striving, desiring or purposing to bring about a harmful consequence, or any consequence for that matter, is blithely unconcerned with the possible consequences. The state of mind of recklessness, in the context of reckless endangerment as well as in other criminal contexts such as depraved heart murder and possibly grossly negligent manslaughter, is variously described as an attitude wherein the criminal agent, conscious of the life-endangering risk involved, nonetheless acts with a conscious disregard of or wanton indifference to the consequences.

As will be more fully discussed hereinafter, there is a difference of opinion in the case law around the country as to whether the state of mind of recklessness in the context of reckless endangerment is to be judged by a subjective or an objective standard. Under the former, the defendant must have an actual perception that his conduct will create a risk that is "substantially certain to cause a [harmful] result." Minor v. State, 85 Md.App. 305, 316, 583 A.2d 1102 (1991), aff'd, Minor v. State, 326 Md. 436, 605 A.2d 138 (1992). Under the latter, by contrast, it is enough that the defendant be "aware that his conduct might cause the result, though it is not substantially certain to happen." Id. (emphasis in original). Maryland has opted for the objective standard. ¹ Minor v. State, 85 Md.App. at 316, 583 A.2d 1102; Minor v. State 326 Md. at 443, 605 A.2d 138. Whatever the content of the perception of the risk, however, both the subjective and the objective standards of recklessness require that the defendant "consciously disregard" the risk. It is the conscious disregard of the risk, whether it is perceived to be great or small, and the indifference to the human consequences that is the fulcrum of the appellant's present contention.

In one sense of the words, a "disregard" of and an "indifference" to the consequences might seem categorically to preclude or be precluded by a deliberate and purposeful effort to inflict a harmful consequence, just as surely as they might seem categorically to preclude or be precluded by a deliberate and purposeful effort to avoid a harmful consequence. ² A willful and determined malefactor, such as one who assaults with the intent to maim, cannot, it would seem, be lightly dismissed as one who is merely disregardful of or indifferent to his own malevolent purpose. The malevolence is arguably more significant than that. One meticulously contriving to bring about a harmful end cannot, in one sense of the word, be characterized as merely reckless. Precisely such a conclusion was reached in People v. Coleman, 131 Ill.App.3d 76, 86 Ill.Dec. 351, 475 N.E.2d 565 (1985), a case in which the Appellate Court of Illinois held that the inconsistent mentes reae precluded convictions for both attempted murder and reckless conduct.

It is, to be sure, an intriguing problem. It is also a nettlesome one, but only at first glance. Many apparent legal problems turn out to be linguistic problems. As we move up the continuum of escalating blameworthiness from negligence to gross negligence to recklessness to specific intent and beyond, at each level our descriptive concentration is on the last enhancing or incremental element that may bring us up to that level. The definitional focus at each step is on the additional element that may raise the level of blameworthiness to that level, not on what will hold it down to that level. Because the progression is upward, we employ language, in our statute law and in our case law, so as to contrast the level of blameworthiness in issue with those levels below it, not with those above it.

When, therefore, we describe the mens rea of reckless endangerment in terms such as "the wanton disregard of life-threatening consequences," what the law means is that nothing less than that mens rea will suffice. It does not mean that neither less than nor more than that mens rea will suffice. We are describing the minimum content for a finding of guilt in a particular degree, not the maximum content. It is always a defense to prove that one is less culpable than charged. It is not a defense to prove that one is more culpable than charged. One does not defend against a charge of second-degree murder by proving that one was really guilty of first-degree murder. To prove culpability at a given level, the State is not required to disprove greater culpability, although a casual scanning of definitional sentences might sometimes lead us to believe so.

Thus, there is nothing legally incompatible or legally inconsistent between the mens rea of a reckless disregard for life-threatening consequences and the mens rea...