Jeffries v. State1/29/1997
hat the appellant invokes as his exemption from a filing deadline. Can, however, the appellant's motion qualify under Rule 4-252(d)? No, but he gets an "A" for effort. The appellant's language in arguing this contention resonates, albeit distantly and unclearly, with echoes that sound beguilingly like an attack on the adequacy of the charge. As the appellant puts it in his brief, he was "convicted of a crime that did not exist." At another point in his brief, the appellant asserts that he "was convicted of a crime that did not exist at the time of the incident in the present case." That sounds deceptively like an attack on a charge. It is not, however.
Even if what the appellant alleges were true (it is not, as we shall explain (infra)), it would not be a case of the "failure of the charging document . . . to charge an offense." To be convicted of a non-existent offense, grievous though such a fate might be, is not the same thing as to be charged with a non-existent offense. A Motion to Dismiss an indictment or a particular count of an indictment for the failure to charge an offense is an attack on the adequacy of the prosecution's pleading. The merits of such a Motion, moreover, may be determined by examining the four corners of the charging document and require no reference to the trial. The issue concerns only the adequacy of the pleading and not the sufficiency of the evidence or the propriety of the trial.
The appellant, however, was not convicted of, let alone charged with, a non-existent crime. He has badly misidentified the crime in issue. He was neither charged with nor convicted of some crime known as carjacking-murder. There is no such crime. The appellant was charged with and convicted of the crime of murder. Murder, of course, was not only in existence as a crime on September 9, 1994, the day on which the appellant murdered Daniel Huston; it has been in existence as long as the Anglo-American common law itself. The charging document, Count One of the indictment, adequately charged the appellant with murder:
The Grand Jurors of the State of Maryland, for the body of Montgomery County, upon their oaths and affirmations, present that DEANGELO KARLOUS JEFFRIES, on or about September 9, 1994, in Montgomery County, Maryland, unlawfully, willfully and of deliberately premeditated malice aforethought, did kill and murder Daniel Huston, in violation of the Common Law and against the peace, government and dignity of the State.
That is the charging document in question and there is no mention of "carjacking" therein. Murder was "the crime" with which the appellant was charged and of which he was convicted. The very wording of the indictment used in this case has received the blessing of the Maryland Legislature. Art. 27 § 616. It has, moreover, received the imprimatur of the Court of Appeals. Neusbaum v. State, 156 Md. 149, 143 A. 872 (1928); Kelley v. State, 181 Md. 642, 31 A.2d 614 (1943). There is no way that the appellant can maintain that the wording of a murder indictment that has received the continuing approval of both the General Assembly and the Court of Appeals fails to charge the offense of murder.
Even so basic a division of murder as that which split it into two degrees for punishment purposes, ch. 138 of the Acts of 1809, did not turn murder into two separate crimes. The crime, regardless of degree, remained simply murder. Weighorst v. State, 7 Md. 442, 451 (1855); Hanon v. State, 63 Md. 123, 126 (1885); Abbott v. State, 188 Md. 310, 312, 52 A.2d 489 (1947); Chisley v. State, 202 Md. 87, 96, 95 A.2d 577 (1953); Stansbury v. State, 218 Md. 255, 146 A.2d 17 (1958); Gladden v. State, 273 Md. 383, 330 A.2d 176 (1974).
A fortiori,
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