Lipinski v. State

CHARLES E. ORTH, Jr., Judge, Specially Assigned. I Robert Patrick Lipinski does not dispute that he killed Eugenia Courtalis. The State does not dispute that the judgment entered against Lipinski is flawed because the Circuit Court for Baltimore County, which found Lipinski guilty of murder in the first degree, gave a definition of “deliberate and premeditated” at odds with the meaning of that phrase as amplified by us in Willey v. State, 328 Md. 126 , 613 A.2d 956 (1992), some nine months after Lipinski’s trial. 1 The question ⁵⁸⁴ is what sanction is to be applied because of the trial court’s error. Lipinski insists that he is entitled to a new trial.

The State urges that the proper sanction is that mandated by the Court of Special Appeals, namely that the judgment be vacated and the case remanded “to allow the trial judge to consider the evidence in accordance with the standard enunciated ... in Willey ... as to whether [Lipinski] acted with premeditation and deliberation.” Lipinski v. State, 95 Md.App. 450, 459 , 622 A.2d 145 (1993). Lipinski filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in which he presented two questions: 1. Is a new trial required where a trial judge applies an erroneous definition of the crime in finding a defendant guilty in a non-jury trial? 2. Is the evidence insufficient to sustain- a conviction for first degree murder?

The State filed a cross-petition asking: Did the trial court apply the correct definition of first degree murder to the facts? We granted Lipinski’s petition and ordered that a writ of certiorari to the Court of Special Appeals shall issue limited solely to a review of the first question presented by him. We denied the cross-petition. II The State and Lipinski agreed that the evidence adduced at the trial was as presented in the opinion of the Court of Special Appeals.

The intermediate appellate court set out verbatim a statement given by Lipinski to the police. See Lipinski, 95 Md.App. at 451-456 , 622 A.2d 145 . We summarize the statement. Courtalis was employed by the Nutri-System Weight Loss Center at its Towson office.

Lipinski was an employee of a ⁵⁸⁵ cleaning service and was assigned to clean that office. He went there on Saturday, 1 June 1991, to perform his duties. He knocked on the door and was told by Courtalis that the place was closed. He explained why he was there.

She reluctantly admitted him. She resented the fact that she had to stay until he was finished with his chores and nagged him incessantly to hurry up so she could leave. The situation finally reached the point where, according to Lipinski, “I just couldn’t take it anymore. I just snapped.” “I had been under a lot of pressure lately working long odd hours to support my family, looking for a new place to live after our landlord advised us the[y] were not going to renew our lease due to a family crisis.

I just didn’t have enough time in each day to do everything I had to do. I was in just as much of a hurry to get out of there as she was. By this time I was tired from lack of sleep and worrying about where me and my family were going to live. With everything that was going on I was tired of it all her bitching at me to get done didn’t help.” 95 Md.App. at 453 , 622 A.2d 145 .

He grabbed her by the arm, took a “butterfly” knife out of his pocket and stabbed her a number of times. The autopsy revealed that she had been stabbed twice in the chest and ten times in the back. The chest wounds were not fatal, but the wounds in the back caused her death. One penetrated Courtalis’s heart, one her lung, and one her liver.

The medical examiner opined, because of the clustering orientation of the back wounds, that the deceased was probably stabbed in the front of the chest, collapsed and then stabbed in the back. The medical examiner concluded that the type of back wounds inflicted indicated a lack of struggle on the part of the victim, that the clustering of the wounds indicated violence or rage, and that the wounds were inflicted one after another in rapid succession. Id. at 452 , 622 A.2d 145 . Lipinski said that he “didn’t mean for this to happen.

I just hit a breaking point.” He tore the ⁵⁸⁶ telephone lines off the wall, washed some blood off his hands, gathered up his cleaning utensils, got into his car and went straight home. Id. at 454 , 622 A.2d 145 . Lipinski told the police that “I cannot to this day believe that I could do something like that.” Id. at 456 , 622 A.2d 145 . “[I]t just got to a point,” he said, “where I didn’t realize what I was doing.” Id. Ill A In announcing his verdict, the trial judge said the question was, “[I]s this murder in the first degree or is this a murder in the second degree?” He observed: The differentiation between murder in the first degree and murder in the second degree has been a traditional one in Maryland for literally hundreds of years.

In law school we learned that the difference between first degree and second degree murder was the element of premeditation. That was the word, the term that was the key in understanding whether a murder was first degree or second degree. The question in this case is, is there evidence that this killing was willful, intentional and deliberate. And we can add the word premeditated, as that means willful and deliberate and with fully formed purpose before the killing.

He noted, “There is no question that the lay person’s definition of premeditation is not what the law really talks about. Most lay people think when you talk about premeditation, that one sat and thought and contemplated and decided and then went out and did an act based on that thought and decision. There have been a number of Maryland cases that say that there is premeditation that occurs in an ⁵⁸⁷ instant, literally an instant. It’s whether the decision to kill has been made before the killing.

The judge continued: There are cases that talk about that decision being formed literally in an instant. In less than a second. One thought following the other, the law says. There are cases that support the proposition that premeditation, this deliberate intention to kill, the decision, the fully formed decision being made in very short, in a very short period in time.

The judge concluded: The physical evidence supports the conclusion that the intention of the Defendant, his intention in both pulling out the knife and in the number of wounds, the location of the wounds, the location of where the wounds were struck, in the location, in the physical office, indicates to this Court that the Defendant formed in his mind before he struck the fatal blow the fully formed purpose to kill the victim. Therefore, the judge held, Lipinski “is guilty of murder in the first degree, and the Court so finds beyond a reasonable doubt.” The judge’s concept of the law was substantially the view at the time. He relied primarily on Smith v. State, 41 Md.App. 277 , 398 A.2d 426 , cert. denied, 284 Md. 748 (1979), which he interpreted as stating: [W]e don’t think the word premeditated today means, of necessity, anything more than having made the choice to kill, a notion already conveyed by the specific intent to kill itself, and conveyed even beyond theoretical argument by the addition of the adjective deliberate. B We decided Willey v. State, 328 Md. 126 , 613 A.2d 956 , on 13 October 1992.

An issue was whether the murder was in the first degree or second degree. Willey was found guilty by a jury of murder in the first degree. The trial judge instructed the jury in accord with the Maryland Criminal Pattern ⁵⁸⁸ Jury Instructions. 2 Willey complained that the instruction failed to point out to the jury any difference between first degree murder and the intent-to-kill variety of second degree murder, 328 Md. at 132 , 613 A.2d 956 . We assumed that Willey had raised below the distinction between an impulsive versus a reflective intent.

Id. Judge Chasanow, writing for the Court, made a thorough analysis of our opinions and the view of legal scholars on the matter. Id. at 132-137 , 613 A.2d 956 . We concluded: [T]he instruction given is not out of sync with our wealth of caselaw on premeditation and deliberation, and paying deference to those cases, we find no reversible error in giving the instruction.

Id. at 137 , 613 A.2d 956 . Although we held that the instruction was not erroneous, we declared that “it should be amplified.” Id. at 138 , 613 A.2d 956 . We acknowledged that some of our cases upon which this instruction may have been based have virtually obliterated the fine and often ⁵⁸⁹ difficult distinction between first degree murder and the intent-to-kill variety of second degree murder. Id.

We proclaimed our belief that “it would be preferable, especially where the distinction is clearly at issue,” for the trial court to emphasize that in order for the jury to conclude that the defendant premeditated the killing it must find that the defendant had sufficient time to consider the decision whether or not to kill and weigh the reasons for or against such a choice. Id. We observed: Movement in this direction would be consistent with the developing trend of courts and commentators to focus more attention upon, and more clearly define, the distinct mental states involved in first versus second degree murder. Id.

We quoted 2 W. LaFave & A. Scott, Jr., Substantive Criminal Law § 7.7, at 237 (1986), adding emphasis and omitting footnotes: “It is often said that premeditation and deliberation require only a ‘brief moment of