Oates v. State

MOYLAN, Judge. 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 appellant, Robert Louis Oates, III, was convicted by a Prince George’s County jury presided over by Judge James Magruder Rea, of manslaughter. His codefendant, Roderick Giles, was convicted of second-degree murder.

On this appeal, the appellant raises the two closely related contentions: 1. that Judge Rea erroneously allowed the inconsistent verdicts involving the appellant and his codefendant to stand; and 2. that Judge Rea erroneously instructed the jury that if it found Giles guilty of a crime it could find the appellant guilty of aiding and abetting a lesser crime. The trial lasted seven days, in the course of which twenty-five witnesses testified. Through that testimonial kaleidoscope, a general pattern emerged with modest clarity. On April 14, 1990, a birthday celebration was held at the Classics III Restaurant on Allentown Road in Prince George’s County.

Neither the appellant nor the codefendant were participants in that celebration but they were present at the restaurant. In the course of the evening, a fight broke out between the appellant and the codefendant, on the one hand, and various party guests, on the other hand. Although a precise chronology is difficult to establish, the level of turbulence was clear. As one party guest testified, a fight started and “people started screaming.

Furniture flying in the air. It was very loud. Smashing glass.” ¹⁸² During the first phase of hostilities, still within the restaurant, one of the party guests and the ultimate homicide victim, Patrick Stanford, was involved in a fight with both the appellant and the codefendant, Giles. One of the latter two punched Stanford in the mouth, knocking out four teeth.

The appellant and Giles then moved on to other fights with other party guests. At some time between 1:30 and 2 A.M., the appellant and Giles left the restaurant and were on the parking lot at the same time that various party guests, including the ultimate homicide victim, Patrick Stanford, were leaving. Threats were hurled between the two opposing camps. One of the departing party guests described how Giles grabbed from his car and then waved menacingly at that witness an object resembling a “butterfly knife.” Patrick Stanford drove away from the scene in a station wagon with two female companions.

The appellant and Giles left the scene in Giles’s white Jetta. Shortly thereafter, at the intersection of Allentown Road and Branch Avenue, the station wagon was stopped for a traffic light when the Jetta pulled up behind it. The appellant and Giles got out of the Jetta and, with a crowbar, smashed the windows of the station wagon. Stanford was pulled out of the wagon and both assailants proceeded to punch and kick him.

In terms of the final lethal attack on Stanford, Pattina Avery, in whose honor, incidentally, the birthday party had been held, testified that both assailants were “punching and stabbing” Stanford at the same time. An uninvolved witness, a University of Maryland student who was simply driving in the area, testified that one of the assailants was holding the victim while the other was-hitting him. After the victim fell to the ground, the two attackers proceeded to kick him. The medical examiner testified that Stanford’s body revealed facial injuries, broken teeth, and twelve stab wounds.

The cause of death was the multiple stab wounds. Both Giles and the appellant elected to testify and admitted their participation in the final altercation with Patrick Stanford at the traffic light. After giving his version of the earlier ¹⁸³ brawl at the Classics III Restaurant, Giles testified that as he and the appellant were driving from the scene, they spotted the car in which Stanford was riding. Giles handed the appellant a crowbar and the appellant jumped out and “began busting out the windows of the car.” As the two female passengers ran screaming from the scene, Stanford got out of the car and allegedly attacked Giles with a knife.

According to Giles, he and the appellant overpowered Stanford and took the knife away. Giles then described how he began “throwing punches” at Stanford with the knife in his hand but denied any actual stabbing. He testified that the appellant was also punching Stanford, although without a knife. Giles was later shocked to learn that the victim had been stabbed.

In his testimony, the appellant also described the fight at the Classics III Restaurant which, he stated, resulted in a “stampede.” The appellant acknowledged getting out of the car at the traffic light and smashing out the back window of the car in which Stanford was riding. The appellant further testified that it was his intention only to break the window and then leave. He was surprised when Giles began fighting -with the victim and he, the appellant, tried to pull Giles off the victim. He disclaimed any intention of hurting anyone that evening.

What the jury concluded and the evidence supported was clear. The death of Patrick Stanford was a criminal homicide. Both the appellant and Giles jointly participated in that criminal homicide. On the basis of the “butterfly knife” earlier observed in Giles’s possession and on the basis of Giles’s acknowledgement that a knife was in his hand as he repeatedly threw punches at Stanford, the 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. ¹⁸⁴ 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.

Judge Rea gave an excellent instruction on each of these forms of involuntary manslaughter, a verdict on either of which theory was fully supported by the evidence in this case: “Now, we’re going to get down to involuntary manslaughter. And I’m going to talk about two kinds of involuntary manslaughter. One is involuntary manslaughter involving [a] grossly negligent act, and the other is involuntary manslaughter where a homicide occurs during an unlawful act. This is a lesser included offense of murder, ladies and gentlemen.

The defendant is charged with the crime of involuntary manslaughter. In order to convict the defendant of involuntary manslaughter, the State must prove that the conduct of the defendants caused the death of Patrick Stanford and that the defendant or defendants, conscious of the risk, acted in a grossly negligent manner; that is, in a manner that created a high degree of risk to human life. Now, [in] the other type of involuntary manslaughter, the State must prove, in order to convict, that the defendant or defendants either singly or with another ... attempted to commit or did commit an unlawful act. ¹⁸⁵ Now, the Court can look at it from this standpoint ... an unlawful act would have been the intent to commit assault and battery, which is a misdemeanor in the State of Maryland. And that the defendant, [alone] or with another, participated in the crime of killing the victim Patrick Stanford, and that the act resulting in the death of Patrick Stanford occurred during the commission or attempted commission of the unlawful act.” The appellant now claims that his verdict and Giles’s verdict were “legally inconsistent” and that his verdict of “aiding and abetting the crime of grossly negligent involuntary manslaughter” should not, therefore, have been accepted by Judge Rea.

How, he asks, can he have aided and abetted in a manslaughter when the person so aided and abetted was found guilty not of manslaughter but of second-degree murder? 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.

The classic definition of a crime is the coming together of a guilty act and a guilty mind, an actus reas and a mens rea. With the vast majority of crimes, there is a single guilty act and a single guilty mind. With criminal homicide as it has evolved over the centuries, however, there is a single guilty ¹⁸⁶ act but a rich smorgasbord of guilty minds from which to choose. Picture, for a moment, a body on the floor with a bullet hole between its eyes.

Picture the homicidal agent standing over it with smoking gun in hand. We have a homicide (the killing of one human being by another) and we have a homicidal agent, but do we have a crime? We do not know, of course. The act of pulling the trigger could range from the most praiseworthy of acts (resulting in a commendation for valor) to the most blameworthy of acts (resulting in the gas chamber).

Even assuming we have criminal homicide rather than justifiable homicide or excusable homicide, we still have no idea whether it is a garden variety criminal homicide (second-degree murder) in any of its four manifestations, aggravated criminal homicide (first-degree murder) in any of its two clear manifestations, or mitigated criminal homicide (manslaughter) in any of its four manifestations. It all depends upon the state of mind of the homicidal agent (at any level of physical participation). With, as in the case of