Harvey v. State

MOYLAN, Judge. The subject of this appeal is the doctrine of transferred intent. The particular question is whether that doctrine, indisputably applicable when an unintended victim is killed and the crime charged is a consummated homicide, is similarly applicable when the unintended victim is not killed (either hit but only wounded or not even hit but only endangered) and the arguable crime, even with the benefit of the doctrine, would only be an inchoate criminal homicide, such as 1) assault with intent to murder, 2) attempted murder (in either degree), or 3) attempted voluntary manslaughter. The appellant, Latrice Michelle Harvey, was convicted by a Prince George’s County jury of assault with intent to murder and reckless endangerment.

On this appeal, she raises three contentions: 1) That the trial judge erroneously instructed the jury on the subject of transferred intent; 2) That the trial judge erroneously failed to merge the conviction for reckless endangerment into the conviction for assault with intent to murder; and 3) That the evidence was not legally sufficient to sustain the conviction for assault with intent to murder. The Facts At approximately 10:30 P.M. on June 14, 1994, at an apartment complex at 1107 Nalley Road in Landover, Prince ⁴⁰⁵ George’s County, a gunfight occurred. An innocent bystander, Tiffany Evans, was shot in the leg and taken to a hospital. For purposes of further analysis, Tiffany Evans is the “unintended victim” or “unintended target.” The appellant, informally known to everyone in the neighborhood as “Kitty Cat,” was not the shooter.

The shooter was Kitty Cat’s male companion. The trouble started with a fight on the parking lot between two groups of young men. The leading combatant on one side was a young man named Antoine. The leading combatant on the other side was Kitty Cat’s brother.

It was while that fight was in progress that Kitty Cat and the ultimate shooter approached the scene of the confrontation. The gun that was ultimately fired was passed, wrapped in a white towel, by an unidentified male to Kitty Cat. She then passed it, in turn, to her companion, who did the actual shooting. As Kitty Cat passed the gun to the shooter, she pointed to one young man in the crowd and told her companion, “Shoot him.” One witness also heard Kitty Cat say that “she wanted him dead.” The male companion, on her command, started shooting but missed the intended target, who turned and ran away.

The shooter did not give chase. Approximately five shots had been fired. Kitty Cat then tapped her companion and caught his attention again. She pointed at another target and, again at her direction, her companion fired approximately four additional shots.

That second intended target was standing in close proximity to Tiffany Evans. The four shots missed their intended target, but one of the errant bullets hit Tiffany Evans in the leg. The Jury Instruction Over the appellant’s objection, the trial judge gave the following instruction on the subject of transferred intent: In this case there are two legal theories that are applicable, and those are the theory of aiding and abetting another, and ... something we call transferred intent.... ⁴⁰⁶ The doctrine of transferred intent means that the intent follows the bullet. The intent is—I think there was one witness that said that the bullet didn’t have any name on it or whose name is on the bullet.

Well, the transfer of intent means that the intent follows wherever the bullet goes. During the course of its deliberations, the jury sent out a note asking for a further explanation of transferred intent. Again over the appellant’s objection, the trial judge gave the following supplemental instruction: All right. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the doctrine of transferred intent is not a very common thing that juries have to deal with.

I have borrowed an instruction from another judge, which I hope will be helpful to you. The doctrine of transferred intent applies to the specific intent to murder. Transferred intent means that if one specifically intends injury to another person, and in an effort to accomplish the injury or harm upon a person other than the one intended, he is guilty of the same kind of crime as if his aim had been more accurate. The fact that a person actually was killed instead of the intended victim, is immaterial, and the only question is what would have been the degree of guilt, if the result intended actually had been accomplished.

The intent is transferred to the person whose death or harm has been caused. The appellant’s primary contention is that the doctrine of transferred intent is inapplicable to the crime of assault with intent to murder and erroneously relieved the State of its obligation to prove .the required mens rea of a specific intent to kill directed at the actual assault victim, Tiffany Evans. Whose Intent Is Being Transferred? Before turning to the ultimate question of the applicability of the transferred intent doctrine to a charge of inchoate criminal homicide, one modest procedural complication must be acknowledged and dealt with.

With regard to the shooting of Tiffany Evans, the appellant, of course, was not the principal in the first degree. That role was played by the appel ⁴⁰⁷ lant’s male companion, the actual triggerman. The appellant was merely a principal in the second degree, present at the scene and actively aiding and abetting the first-degree principal in his criminal conduct but not herself wielding the gun. To what extent, therefore, does the appellant, as a second-degree principal, partake of the guilt of the first-degree principal and to what extent must she generate her own guilt?

That depends on which particular element of the larger crime is being examined. With respect to the actus reus—the physical battery of Tiffany Evans—the appellant bears full responsibility for whatever her companion did. The shooter committed a criminal act regardless of whether his marksmanship was good or bad, and the appellant shared full responsibility for the criminal act itself. She was responsible for the consequences of his bad aim as surely as she would have been responsible for the consequences of his good aim.

The actus reus of the first-degree principal is attributable to all parties to the crime. Although we are in this case dealing with an inchoate criminal homicide rather than a consummated criminal homicide, the law that has been developed in the consummated homicide context, as to which elements of a crime are shared by all multiple defendants alike and which elements must be established independently as to each defendant individually, is instructive in this context as well. All participants in a crime—the various aiders, abettors, and inciters, the principals in the second degree and the accessories before the fact— are tied into the criminal act itself, to wit, into a common and collective actus reus. If, therefore, the level or degree of guilt for a criminal homicide is controlled by the actus reus, then the guilt level of all participants must rise or fall together.

If the homicide occurred in the perpetration or attempted perpetration of a felony spelled out in Md.Code Ann., Art. 27, §§ 408, 409, or 410, for instance, all parties to the crime would be guilty of felony-murder in the first degree. Their individual intents would be immaterial, provided only that they had the neces ⁴⁰⁸ sary intent to commit the underlying felony. If the felony should be one of the residual felonies under the common law felony-murder doctrine and not one of those listed in sections 408, 409, or 410, the guilt of all participants would then be murder in the second degree, under the common law felony-murder doctrine. If the crime being perpetrated were a misdemeanor and death resulted, all participants would be guilty of manslaughter under the common law misdemeanor-manslaughter doctrine.

It is, with respect to those particular crimes, the collective act to which all defendants are tied that controls the level of guilt. When the degree of aggravation or level of blameworthiness of a crime, however, is not automatically a function of the criminal act itself but depends, rather, on the additional presence of some special mental element or specific intent—in this case the specific intent to kill that could elevate a simple assault and battery into an assault with intent to murder— each co-participant in the crime is on his own as to that mental element. The mens rea of each participant is independent of that of all other participants. It is the unique mens rea of each defendant that controls the level of guilt of that defendant.

An aider and abettor or an accessory before the fact may be more blameworthy than the principal in the first degree or equally blameworthy or less blameworthy. Each mens rea floats free. In State v. Ward, 284 Md. 189, 201 , 396 A.2d 1041 (1978), Judge Orth noted in this regard: Furthermore, a principal in the second degree may be convicted of a higher crime or a lower crime than the principal in the first degree. Clark & Marshall § 8.05, p. 521; Perkins at 670-671. 15 ⁴⁰⁹ Although, as State v. Ward noted, the guilt levels of principals in the first and second degrees could rise and fall independently of each other, the common law was far more rigid in the case of accessories before the fact.

At the common law, an accessory before the fact could not be found guilty, either in terms of the crime or the degree of a crime, at a higher level of blameworthiness than could the principal in the first degree. The Court of Appeals abrogated that limitation in Jones v. State, 302 Md. 153 , 486 A.2d 184 (1985), and held that the guilt level of an accessory before the fact could be determined exclusively by the mens rea of that accessory and was not in any way dependent on the guilt level of the principal in the first degree. Judge Eldridge wrote for the Court, 302 Md. at 161 , 486 A.2d 184 : Merely because the evidence in the principal’s trial may have been different, or the principal may have agreed to a favorable plea bargain arrangement, or the jury in the principal’s trial may have arrived at a compromise verdict, is not a good reason for allowing the accessory to escape the consequences of having committed a particular offense.... Consequently, with respect to cases where the trials of accused accessories before the fact commence after the date of our opinion in the present case, an accessory before the fact may be convicted of a greater crime or greater degree of crime than that of which his principal was convicted.

(Citations omitted). The question of differing levels of guilt arose squarely as the critical issue for decision in Oates v. State, 97 Md.App. 180, 181 , 627 A.2d 555 (1993): The single question raised by this appeal is simple. When two defendants are jointly convicted of perpetrating a criminal homicide, must their levels of guilt (blameworthiness) be the same? The answer is equally simple: No. The death of one Patrick Stanford was a criminal homicide.

Both the appellant Oates and a codefendant named Giles jointly participated in that criminal homicide. Giles, the prin ⁴¹⁰ cipal in the first degree, was found to be guilty of murder, of the specific-intent-to-kill variety, in the second degree: [T]he jury obviously concluded that Giles was a principal in the first degree, the wielder of the weapon that struck the fatal blows. From the multiplicity of potentially fatal blows, moreover, the jury concluded that Giles attacked Stanford with a specific intent to kill. The jury gave Giles the benefit of the doubt, however, when it concluded that that specific intent to kill was not premeditated.

The obvious verdict under the circumstances was that Giles was guilty of murder in the second degree. 97 Md.App. at 183 , 627 A.2d 555 . The appellant Oates, however, albeit indisputably guilty of participation in the lethal act, did not share the mens rea of a specific intent to kill, either premeditated or unpremeditated. His mens rea was both of a different kind and at a different level of blameworthiness: It is equally clear that the jury concluded, with abundant support in the evidence, that the appellant jointly participated with Giles in the criminal homicide. The jury obviously concluded that the appellant was a principal in the second degree, not wielding the lethal weapon but actively aiding and abetting the man who did.

Perhaps crediting the exculpatory testimony of the appellant or at least entertaining some doubt thereby, the jury did not conclude that the appellant attacked Stanford with a specific intent to kill or even a specific intent to do grievous bodily harm. Giving the appellant a significant benefit of the doubt, it concluded simply that the appellant was guilty of either 1) grossly negligent, life-endangering conduct toward Stanford or 2) the perpetration of an unlawful act (assault and battery) upon Stanford that resulted in Stanford’s death. Either of those closely related states of mind would render the appellant guilty of involuntary manslaughter. That was the verdict the jury returned as to the appellant. 97 Md.App. at 184 , 627 A.2d 555 .

Oates claimed that the two verdicts were “legally inconsistent” and that he could not be guilty of “aiding and abetting ⁴¹¹ the crime of grossly negligent involuntary manslaughter” when the verdict with respect to the first-degree principal had been for an intentional murder in the second degree. In rejecting that contention, we reasoned, 97 Md.App. at 185 , 627 A.2d 555 : The appellant betrays a lack of appreciation of the complex matrix of blameworthiness arising out of a single criminal homicide. The appellant was not in this case an aider and abettor to involuntary manslaughter any more than he was an aider and abettor to second-degree murder or an aider and abettor to first-degree murder. He was, purely and simply, an aider and abettor to criminal homicide, that and nothing more.

When two or more persons are joint participants in a crime, they are joint participants only with respect to a single and common actus reus. Where, however, a single criminal act has different levels of blameworthiness contingent upon the particular mens rea with which it is perpetrated, multiple participants in that crime do not necessarily share the same mens rea. Although joint participation ultimately depends upon a mutual tie to the same criminal act, the individual mentes reae or levels of guilt of the joint participants are permitted to float free and are not tied to each other in any way. If their mentes reae are different, their independent levels of guilt, reflected by nondependent verdicts, will necessarily be different as well.

(Emphasis supplied). This Court went on to observe that with respect to criminal homicide, “there is a single guilty act but a rich smorgasbord of guilty minds from which to choose.” 97 Md.App. at 185-86 , 627 A.2d 555 . The opinion then gave examples, 97 Md.App. at 187 , 627 A.2d 555 , of the varied menus that such smorgasbords might present: The mens rea or level of blameworthiness of a principal in the first degree by no means controls the mens rea or level of blameworthiness of a principal in the second degree or of an accessory before the fact. If three codefendants burst into a motel room and discover the wife of one of them in an act of adultery, what is the crime if the two adulterers are ⁴¹² then shot and killed?

If the triggerman (the principal in the first degree) is the cuckolded husband, the Rule of Provocation may mitigate his guilt downward to the manslaughter level. The accomplice who hands him the gun, however, will be guilty at least of murder in the second degree, notwithstanding the fact that he is aiding and abetting a mere manslayer. If the third codefendant, who led the suspicious husband to the motel room in the first place, knew full well what would there be found and had been scheming for some time thereby to get rid of the adulterous lover, his premeditated intent to kill would raise his guilt to the first degree notwithstanding the guilt of his fellow participants at lower levels. Conversely, the principal in the first degree (the triggerman) could have possessed a premeditated intent to kill and his aider and abettor, who handed him the gun in a fit of jealous rage, might be the beneficiary of the Rule of Provocation.

Before we even begin to talk about the propriety of transferring a specific intent to kill from the intended target to the unintended target, therefore, we must determine whose intent we are contemplating transferring—that of the first-degree principal who pulled the trigger or that of the appellant who aided and abetted him. Their respective intents may coincidentally have been the same, but they were not necessarily so. At the trial of the aider and abettor, Kitty Cat, the particular mens rea of the triggerman, even assuming he had one, is a matter of blithe unconcern to us. Once the trigger-man committed the actus reus which the appellant aided and abetted, the triggerman can be conveniently factored out of the equation.

To be guilty, even as a principal in the second degree, of assault with intent to murder, it is the appellant herself who must have entertained, as she aided and abetted, the specific intent to kill the second intended target. That is the sine qua non before we even consider the propriety of transferring that specific intent to kill from the intended target to the unintended victim, Tiffany Evans. Self-evident ⁴¹³ ly, that which does not exist in the first instance cannot be transferred. In this case, however, the evidence was legally sufficient to permit a finding that the appellant specifically intended to kill the two targets toward whom she directed her companion’s fire.

If directing a deadly weapon at a vital part of the human anatomy can give rise to a permitted inference of an intent to kill, which it most assuredly can, then, by parity of reasoning, aiding and abetting the directing of a deadly weapon at a vital part of the human anatomy can give rise to the same permitted inference. There was, moreover, evidence that the appellant, as she directed her companion’s fire, had said, “Shoot him” and “I want him dead.” The express utterances were, to be sure, with respect to the first intended target, but there was no indication, as she immediately redirected fire at a second intended target, that her deadly purpose had in any way ameliorated. Since there was legally sufficient evidence to show that the appellant harbored a specific intent to kill the second intended target, the stage is set for inquiring into whether that specific intent to kill can be transferred, in the context of an assault with intent to murder trial, from the intended target to the unintended victim, Tiffany Evans. The inquiry into whether a doctrine developed to handle special problems in cases of consummated homicide should be extended to cases of inchoate homicide requires us to look at the evolution of the transferred intent doctrine generally.

Transferred Intent Generally Suppose the intended victim in the cross-hairs of the gun-sight is the President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Suppose the assassin’s aim is unsure and the unintended recipient of the errant shot is Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago. What is the guilt of the assassin with respect to Mayor Cermak, to whom the assassin bore no ill-will nor ever intended any harm? We encounter the issue of trans ⁴¹⁴ ferred intent, whereunder it is sometimes said that the intent follows the bullet.

As we attempt to follow the badly aimed or otherwise errant bullet that misses or is deflected from A (the intended target) and then hits or comes perilously close to B (the unintended target), a matrix of no less than nine combinations of criminal harms or acti rei presents itself. On the vertical axis, the intended target may have been 1) aimed at but missed, 2) hit but only wounded, or 3) hit and killed. With respect to each of those possibilities, there are then three further possibilities on the horizontal axis. Those are where the unintended target may have been 1) hit and killed, 2) hit but only wounded, or 3) endangered but missed.

Which combinations are appropriate subjects for the application of the transferred intent doctrine? [[Image here]] When the Intended Victim, Is Missed and the Unintended Victim is Killed The classic transferred intent scenario was that in which lethal force was directed toward an intended victim, missed its target, and killed an unintended victim. That was the context in which the doctrine was hammered out as part of English common law. The doctrine was early recognized at common law. Sir Matthew Hale, in 1 History of the Pleas of the Crown (published posthumously in 1736), said, at 466: To these may be added the cases above-mentioned, viz. if A. by malice fore-thought strikes at B. and missing him ⁴¹⁵ strikes C. whereof he dies, tho he never bore any malice to C. yet it is murder, and the law transfers the malice to the party slain; the like of poisoning.

Forty years later, Sir William Blackstone, in 4 Commentaries on the Laws of England, reiterated the common law rule according to Hale, at 200-01: Thus if one shoots at A. and misses him, but kills B., this is murder; because of the previous felonious intent, which the law transfers from one to the other. The same is the case where one lays poison for A.; and B., against whom the prisoner had no malicious intent, takes it, and it kills him; this is likewise murder. Strangely, that almost universally recognized common law doctrine of transferred intent had never been squarely before the appellate courts of Maryland until it came before the Court of Special Appeals in Gladden v. State, 20 Md.App. 492 , 316 A.2d 319 , aff'd 273 Md. 383 , 330 A.2d 176 (1974). The killer, John Michael “Box” Gladden, was involved in a dispute with Walter Edward “Rabbi” Siegel over the sale of $20 worth of heroin of an allegedly inferior grade.

As “Box” chased “Rabbi” several times around a truck in the 2300 block of Barclay Street in Baltimore, he wildly fired off four or five shots from a .45 caliber revolver. None of the shots hit “Rabbi,” who got away unscathed. Of the wild shots, however, one went through a nearby window, one hit a window sill, and two others struck nearby houses. A twelve-year-old boy was seated on his living room couch at 2325 Barclay Street when a .45 caliber bullet fatally pierced his heart and both lungs. 20 Md.App. at 494-95 , 316 A.2d 319 .

Gladden contended, on appeal, that he should not have been convicted of first-degree murder because he bore no malice toward the unintended victim. He argued that the common law doctrine of “transferred intent” should not be received into Maryland, although he acknowledged that it was the law in the overwhelming majority of common law jurisdictions. This Court, 20 Md.App. at 495 , 316 A.2d 319 , had “no difficulty in deciding that ‘transferred intent’ is, and should be, a part of ⁴¹⁶ the common law of this State.” After analyzing at length the various treatises and authorities, the Court concluded: We now hold that the doctrine of “transferred intent” is the law of Maryland and that whatever mens rea a defendant entertains as to his intended target will carry over to any unintended victim, when the attack goes wide of its mark. 20 Md.App. at 498 , 316 A.2d 319 . In Gladden v. State, 273 Md. 383 , 330 A.2d 176 (1974), the Court of Appeals affirmed the decision of this Court.

In the very thoroughly researched opinion of Judge O’Donnell, it then supplemented the review of common law authorities by reference to several of the early English cases, 273 Md. at 390-91 , 330 A.2d 176 . The Court of Appeals specifically rejected Gladden’s contention that the “transferred intent” doctrine was unworthy of incorporation into Maryland because it was a “curious survival of the antique law”: Although admittedly the doctrine is of “ancient vintage,” we do not agree with the petitioner’s contention that under modern statutory classifications it is a “curious survival of' the antique law” requiring its rejection. It has lost none of its patina by its application over the centuries down unto modern times; its viability is recognized by its current acceptance and application. (Footnote omitted). 273 Md. at 392 , 330 A.2d 176 .

Judge O’Donnell then engaged in a definitive survey, 273 Md. at 392-403 , 330 A.2d 176 , of the case law throughout the United States accepting the doctrine of “transferred intent.” In analyzing the development of the “transferred intent” doctrine at the common law, Evans v. State, 28 Md.App. 640, 687-88 , 349 A.2d 300 (1975), aff'd 278 Md. 197 , 362 A.2d 629 (1976), pointed out that although the notion that the intent “transferred” from one victim to another was, in effect, a legal fiction in the course of the law’s development, the doctrine today is eminently sound in application: In earlier evolutionary stages, a legal fiction or a procedural device may have been at work. It is now clearly recognized, ⁴¹⁷ however, that what is involved is simply a rule of substantive law that the mens rea of murder as to anyone coupled with the actus reus of a homicide is sufficient to constitute the crime of murder. As long as the mens rea and the actus reus correspond in time, there is no requirement that the mens rea be directed specifically at the actual victim. The modern and better explanations of the doctrine point out the inappropriateness of the word “transferred” in the earlier case law.

Perkins, Criminal Law (2d [e]d. 1969) makes it plain that to speak of “transferring the malice” was simply “to offer an unsound explanation ... to support a very sound conclusion,” saying at 826: “If, without justification, excuse or mitigation, D with intent to kill A fires a shot which misses A but unexpectedly causes the death of B, D is guilty of murder. To speak of transferring the malice from A to B is merely to offer an unsound explanation (carried over from the law of torts) to support a very sound conclusion. The proper explanation is that D is guilty of murder in such a case because all elements of the offense are present, with mention if it seems necessary of the fact that as a crime the wrong was committed against the state. An intent to commit homicide without justification, excuse or mitigation, is malice aforethought; D had such an intent and therefore had malice aforethought; and an act done by D with this malice aforethought caused the death of another—and hence D has committed homicide with malice aforethought, which is murder by definition.” To a similar effect is LaFave and Scott, Criminal Law (1972), at 258, pointing out that the right result is reached but that the earlier “sort of reasoning is, of course, pure fiction”: These proper conclusions of law as to criminal liability in the bad-aim situation are sometimes said to rest upon the ground of “transferred intent” ...

This sort of reasoning is, of course, pure fiction. A never really intended to harm C; but it is not necessary, in order to impose criminal liability upon A, to pretend that he did. What is really meant, by ⁴¹⁸ this round-about method of explanation, is that when one person (A) acts (or omits to act) with intent to harm another person (B), but because of a bad aim he harms a third person (C) whom he did not intend to harm, the law considers him (as it ought) just as guilty as if he had actually harmed the intended victim. In other words, criminal homicide, battery, arson and malicious mischief do not require that the defendant cause harm to the intended victim; an unintended victim will do just as well, (footnotes omitted).

In that classic scenario, one corner of the matrix was readily filled in: [[Image here]] The Conceptual Problem Some of the early, and simplistic, explanations of the transferred intent doctrine gave rise to some troubling conceptual problems. The classic formulation envisioned a single actus reus—the death of the unintended victim. If the single mens rea—the specific intent to kill the intended victim, e.g.—could then be “transferred” to the unintended victim, the unitary mens rea could combine with the unitary actus reus to produce one unitary and doctrinally tidy crime. Q.E.D. The simple arithmetic explanation proved inadequate, however, when there was more than one actus reus.

Suppose, in addition to the death of the unintended victim, the intended victim had also been killed or, at least, wounded by the bullet in its flight. If the mens rea had to be used to prove the ⁴¹⁹ crime against the intended victim, what was then left to be “transferred” to the case involving the unintended victim? The conceptual problem also arose even where the deadly force missed the intended victim completely but the State nonetheless sought to charge the assailant with the inchoate crime of attempted murder or assault with intent to murder. If the mens rea were in limited supply, to which of two crimes should it be allocated?

How could a single mens rea be made to do double duty? It may now seem silly but this sort of anguishing was, in the course of the law’s development, a doctrinal stumbling block. The limiting factor in such analysis was that, subconsciously, it assumed that it must apply the same arithmetic to the mens rea that it applied to the actus reus. It thereby created unnecessary but perplexing problems.

If the mens rea has been transferred to the unintended actus reus, it is asked, how then could it still be available for an inchoate crime involving the intended actus reus? If it had been transferred somewhere else, how could it still be available here? Conversely, if we had used up the mens rea by combining it with the intended actus reus to make one complete inchoate crime such as attempted murder, had we not then exhausted its utility so that there was nothing left to be transferred to the unintended actus reus? If it has been used here, how can it still be available to be sent elsewhere?

By thinking of the mens rea in such finite terms—as some discrete unit that must be either here or there—we have created a linguistic problem for ourselves where no real-life problem existed. Criminal acts, consummated or inchoate, are discrete events that can be both pinpointed and counted. A mens rea, by contrast, is an elastic thing of unlimited supply. It neither follows nor fails to follow the bullet.

It does not go anywhere. It remains in the brain of the criminal actor and never moves. It may combine with a single actus reus to make a single crime. It may as readily combine with a hundred acti rei, intended and unintended, to make a hundred crimes, consummated and inchoate.

Unforeseen circum ⁴²⁰ stances may multiply the criminal acts for which the criminal agent is responsible. A single state of mind, however, will control the fact of guilt and the level of guilt of them all. The Fate of the Intended