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Jeffries v. State1/29/1997
even lesser distinctions among the various theories, rationales, or mentes reae that may support a conviction for either second-degree or first-degree murder do not create separate crimes. The crime is still murder whether based, for instance, on a finding of an intent to commit grievous bodily harm or on a finding of a depraved heart. Sections 407, 408, 409, and 410, setting out various mentes reae and circumstantial modalities that will qualify murder as murder in the first degree, do not represent separate crimes but only establish alternative ways of finding the requisite aggravation. Wood v. State, 191 Md. 658, 666-67, 62 A.2d 576 (1948).
Within the more particularized realm of statutory felony-murder, the even more parochial distinctions among fifteen separate felonies and fifteen respective attempts (Art. 27, §§ 408, 409, 410) do not create thirty separate crimes. They represent nothing more than thirty different factual possibilities or modalities for committing felony-murder in the first degree. A unanimous verdict of guilty of first-degree felony-murder would not be overturned even if it could be conclusively determined that six of the jurors stopped their analysis after concluding that the murder in question occurred in the course of an in-house robbery, five others analyzed it only in terms of a murder in the course of a burglary, and one lone juror (not sure that the victim had any money) reached the conclusion that the murder occurred in the course of an attempted robbery. The unanimous verdict would have been guilty of the single crime of felony-murder, and not three fragmented decisions with respect to three separate crimes of robbery-murder, burglary-murder, and attempted-robbery-murder.
Even allowing for the fine tuning as to 1) degree and 2) murderous mens rea, the appellant here was charged with and convicted of generic first-degree felony-murder, not carjacking murder. First-degree felony-murder existed as a crime on September 9, 1994. There was no basis to dismiss the charging document. If, on the other hand, the motion was something other than a Motion to Dismiss on the ground that the charging document failed to charge an offense, it was not timely filed.
Had the appellant succeeded with his subtle procedural alchemy, it must be pointed out, he might well have reaped a reward grossly inordinate to anything he could have hoped for under a timely filed and meritorious Motion for New Trial. On a Motion for New Trial, the most a defendant can achieve is a new trial. In the appellant's "Motion to Dismiss," by contrast, he began modestly enough by requesting that the trial judge "dismiss the verdict of guilty to Count One, Murder," (emphasis supplied) but he arguably raised the stakes with his final prayer for relief:
WHEREFORE, the Defendant requests that this Honorable Court dismiss Count One of the indictment.
Such a dismissal, if granted, might well have entitled the appellant to go "scot-free" for the murder of Daniel Huston. It is not unlikely that the appellant would have argued for just such a result if his Motion had been granted and had the State then sought to retry him. He would then have argued that the "dismissed" count embraced far more than carjacking-murder. In any event, the appellant's Motion (whatever it was) was denied, and we affirm that denial.
2. Was the Motion, in Effect, a Motion for New Trial?
As a motion that, in its exclusive thrust, challenged a trial verdict as being the allegedly flawed result of an alleged trial error, it was, in full effect and notwithstanding its deceptive label, a Motion for New Trial. The absolutely dispositive fact is that, as such, it was filed 203 days
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