Caparella v. State

H^ndjJrson, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellant was indicted in Howard County on a charge of escaping from Patuxent Institution on August 18, 1956, where he had been detained and confined as a defective delinquent, as defined in Code (1951), Art. 31B, sec. 5. After a motion to dismiss was overruled, the appellant pleaded not guilty, elected a trial by the court, was found guilty and sentenced to serve five years in the Maryland Penitentiary. The appeal raises only questions of law, whether the escape statute, Code (1951), Art. 27, sec. 164, applies to Patuxent Institution, and whether it is so vague and uncertain as to render any indictment thereunder invalid and unconstitutional.

Code (1951), Art. 27, sec. 164, provides that “If any offender or person legally detained and confined in the Penitentiary, or Jail, or House of Correction, or Reformatory, or Station House, or any other place of confinement, in this State, shall escape,” he may “be sentenced to confinement in the Penitentiary, Jail or House of Correction for such additional period, not exceeding ten years, as the Court may adjudge. * * We held in Baker v. State, 205 Md. 42 , that the section covered an escape from Boys’ Village, although the commitment was not for a criminal offense. Stress was laid on the history of the institution now known as Boys’ Village, to show the probable legislative intent to include it under the category of reformatory, and upon the use of the words “offender” or “person legally detained and confined”, in the alternative. Patuxent Institution is neither a prison, a hospital nor an insane asylum, but exercises some of the functions of all three, as we noted in Eggleston v. State, 209 Md. 504, 513 . It is of some significance that the Patuxent Institution, under Code (1951), Art. 31B, sec. 4, was placed “within the General Administrative Control and supervision of the Board of Correction”, although not described as a penal ³⁵⁸ institution or assigned a place in the Code under Article 27.

It is also significant that by definition, a defective delinquent is one who has a propensity toward anti-social or criminal behavior, as demonstrated by a conviction for one or more criminal offenses. The purpose of the defective delinquent law is not to punish, but to confine a person of criminal tendencies as an actual danger to society, which is one of the chief purposes of the criminal law. We think Patuxent Institution is a place of confinement sufficiently analogous to a reformatory, which also holds out a hope of' rehabilitation, so as to fall within the phrase “other place of confinement”. The appellant argues