Williams v. State

• Decision Date: 01 September 1993
• Docket Number: No. 1587,1587
• Citation: 646 A.2d 1101,101 Md.App. 408
• Parties: Marvin Larvae WILLIAMS v. STATE of Maryland. ,
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

Page 408

101 Md.App. 408

646 A.2d 1101

Marvin Larvae WILLIAMS v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 1587, Sept. Term, 1993.

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland.

Sept. 1, 1994.

Certiorari Denied Jan. 11, 1995.

Gary S. Offutt, Asst. Public Defender (Stephen E. Harris, Public Defender, on the brief), Baltimore, for appellant.

Diane E. Keller, Asst. Atty. Gen. (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Atty. Gen., Baltimore, and Sandra A. O'Connor, State's Atty. for Baltimore County, Towson, on the brief), for appellee.

Submitted to ALPERT, WENNER and DAVIS, JJ.

ALPERT, Judge.

One fundamental exception to the duress defense lies at the center of this appeal. Marvin Larvae Williams, appellant, was charged with attempted robbery with a deadly weapon, daytime housebreaking, and the use of a handgun in the commission of a crime of violence. Williams waived his right to a jury trial and a court trial commenced in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County (Kahl, J.) on February 23, 1993, at the close of which, the trial judge requested memoranda concerning the defense of duress. The case was resumed on May 4, 1993, at which time Williams was convicted of the charged offenses. He was sentenced to eight years imprisonment for attempted robbery with a deadly weapon, eight years for daytime housebreaking and five years imprisonment, without possibility of parole, for the use of a handgun in the commission of a crime of violence. All sentences were to run concurrently. Appellant noted a timely appeal and asks two questions:

1. Was the trial court clearly erroneous in convicting Appellant of the offenses with which he was charged?

2. Should the docket entries be amended to correctly reflect Appellant's convictions? ¹

FACTS

The victim, the Reverend Chris Glenn Hale, lived at 8601 Gray Fox Road, Apartment 102 in Randallstown, Maryland at the time of the incident. On March 1, 1990 at or about 4:45 p.m., Hale heard a knock on his apartment door. He went to the door, looked through the keyhole, and saw Williams standing at the door. Hale asked who was there and Williams answered by mumbling, asking if a certain person resided at Hale's residence. Hale could not understand Williams so he partially opened the door, whereupon four men, including Williams, rushed through. One of the men, not Williams, proceeded to hold a gun to Hale's face. Hale noticed that three of the men were armed, but did not see if Williams was armed.

After the men entered Hale's apartment, they spread out around the apartment to search for other persons, and the apparent leader demanded that Hale divulge the location of "the money" and "the dope." Williams, in the meantime, kept telling the men that the "dope" was in Hale's apartment, that he and Hale were friends, and that he had been in the apartment the previous day where he had used the "dope" with Hale. After searching unsuccessfully for the "dope," Williams was forced to kneel next to Hale, and the three men made more demands of the both of them as to where the money and the dope were located. The men then allowed Williams to get up from the floor to make a telephone call. Williams spoke on the phone for about ten minutes, and when he got off the phone, he walked out of the bedroom with two of the men (including the leader), where they talked for about five minutes. Hale was then tied up and the men, including Williams, left shortly. Nothing was taken from Hale's apartment.

At the trial, Williams testified that he was abducted by the three men because they believed that he knew the whereabouts of the drug stash of one Chuckie Eubanks, a reputed drug dealer. Williams had borrowed money from Chuckie's brother, Rodney, and had been induced to make a drug run to New York in order to help repay his debt. The Eubanks organization required Williams to make a second trip to New York, during which Williams cooperated with the police and obtained the names, phone numbers, addresses, and license tag numbers of the parties involved in the drug deal. Apparently, the three abductors, who were former members of Eubanks's drug organization, knew of Williams's relationship with Eubanks and believed that he would know the location of the stash house. When Williams was abducted by the men, he told them that he did not know the location of the stash house. The men did not believe Williams and threatened to kill him if he did not disclose its location. Williams led the men to Hale's apartment, told them it was the stash house, and knocked on the door. Once inside Hale's apartment, Williams testified that he pretended to participate in the search of the premises. Williams also said that the phone call he made was to his mother and was done at the request of one of the abductors who instructed him to say that "everything was all right," the abductors being concerned because Williams's sister had witnessed the abduction.

Duress

Williams asserts that the trial court erred because its decision was "predicated upon Appellant having engaged in criminal conduct in which he was not specifically directed to engage. Because of this, the trial court never even focused upon the question it actually had to resolve: whether any legal alternative existed for Appellant to the conduct in which he engaged." In the instant case, the trial court heard the testimony of all the witnesses and concluded that

[t]he [Appellant] wants you to believe that he was victimized, that he was taken off the street, and by point of gun, forced to commit an armed robbery. That simply is not true. No one forced him to commit an armed robbery. No one forced him to go to the Reverend's house and demand money. The only thing these three persons wanted was to have the debt repaid, and they didn't care how it was done. The [Appellant] said, I don't care how I repay the debt, I just want to save my own soul, and I will commit an armed robbery to do it, and I will assist in the commission of an armed robbery if that satisfies the debt, if that appeases you and I am safe.

The court went on to find that the testimony taken as a whole did "lend [ ] some corroboration to [Appellant's] suggestion that, at least to some degree, [Appellant] was under duress." The court however, did qualify its finding by noting that the duress was not "to go to the stash house" but rather "duress to pay the debt." ² Accordingly, the court aptly focused on a very narrow issue: "whether the fact that [appellant] was under duress to repay the debt, and thereby created the scenario for this offense, operates as a complete defense to the offense." The court requested additional memoranda on this issue and concluded that facts of this case did not support a finding of duress. Accordingly, we are faced with the question of whether a defendant's contributory actions can act as a bar to the availability of the defense of duress, i.e., whether the appellant's conduct presents an exception to the applicability of the duress defense. We conclude that it does and explain.

Chief Judge Orth, speaking for this court nearly a quarter of a century ago, explained that

[i]n order to constitute a defense, the duress by another person on the defendant must be present, imminent, and impending, and of such a nature as to induce well grounded apprehension of death or serious bodily injury if the act is not done. It must be of such a character as to leave no opportunity to the accused for escape. Mere fear or threat by another is not sufficient nor is a threat of violence at some prior time. The defense cannot be raised if the apprehended harm is only that of property damage or future but not present personal injury.

Frasher v. State, 8 Md.App. 439, 449, 260 A.2d 656 (1970) (citing 1 Wharton's Criminal Law and Procedure (Anderson) § 123, pp. 262-264). See also Wentworth v. State, 29 Md.App. 110, 118, 349 A.2d 421 (1975), cert. denied, 278 Md. 735 (1976). Additionally, we noted that the defense of duress is not successful if the "compulsion arose by the defendant's own fault, negligence, or misconduct." Frasher, 8 Md.App. at 449 (citing 1 Wharton's Criminal Law, supra, § 123, p. 264; 16 C.J., Criminal Law, § 59, p. 91; 22 C.J.S., Criminal Law, § 44, p. 136; Ross v. State, 169 Ind. 388, 82 N.E. 781 (1907); State v. Clay, 220 Iowa 1191, 264 N.W. 77 (1935); State v. Patterson, 117 Or. 153, 241 P. 977 (1925); People v. Merhige, 212 Mich. 601, 180 N.W. 418 (1920)). See also Darby v. State, 3 Md.App. 407, 415-22, 239 A.2d 584 (1968).

Our research has not disclosed any controlling Maryland cases on this issue. Accordingly, we examine the legal reasoning and analysis from other state and federal jurisdictions.

A. State Cases--Recent Cases

In Commonwealth v. Knight, 416 Pa.Super. 586, 611 A.2d 1199 (1992), the appellant, Terrence Knight, attempted to rob a bar at gunpoint. When the owner of the bar pulled a gun, Knight said that there were other men outside, and ran out the door. Knight was later picked up by police and identified by the bar owner as the man who tried to rob the bar. Id. 611 A.2d at 1201. At trial, Knight relied upon the defense of duress. He asserted that he was forced to rob the bar by two men from whom he bought $60 worth of drugs earlier that day. Knight claimed that the drug dealers, armed with a knife and a baseball bat, found him at his girlfriend's house, and forced him under the threat of death to go to the bar and rob it. Id. 611 A.2d at 1201.

The court, citing 18 Pa.Cons.Stat.Ann. § 309(b), ³ which was adopted from the Model Penal Code, stated that the duress defense is unavailable if the actor "recklessly placed himself in a situation in which it was probable that he would be subjected to duress," or if the actor was "negligent in placing himself in such a situation, whenever negligence suffices to establish culpability to the offense charged." Id. 611 A.2d at 1203. Knight argued that the term "recklessly" in subsection (b) could not be easily comprehended by a lay person without legal assistance. Id....