Ray v. State

¹⁶¹ Moylan, J. The subject is Maryland Rule of Procedure 4-345(a)’s provision that: “The court may correct an illegal sentence at any time.” The appellant, Bashawn Montgomery Ray, filed in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County on March 23, 2015, just such a motion to correct what he deemed to be an illegal sentence. On July 24, 2015, the court denied the motion without hearing or written opinion. This appeal followed. It presents an appropriate occasion for a macroscopic overview of Rule 4-345(a): its origin; its purpose; its resultant freedom from a filing deadline; its critical distinction between inherent sentence illegality and antecedent procedural illegality; the great leap forward from looking simply at statutory sentencing caps to more ambiguous caps imposed by plea negotiations; and the criteria for deciding precisely what a negotiated agreement means.

Antecedent Trial and Appeals At the trial of the case based on the agreed statement of facts on April 18, 2011, the appellant was found 1) guilty of conspiracy to commit theft of property with a value of at least $1,000 and 2) guilty of making a false statement when under arrest. On August 11, 2011, he was sentenced to a term of ten years’ incarceration with all but four years suspended followed by four years of probation. The appellant appealed his convictions to this Court. In a 44-page opinion in Ray v. State, 206 Md.App. 309 , 47 A.3d 1113 (2012), this Court affirmed the convictions.

That opinion is not pertinent to the issue now before us. The Court of Appeals granted certiorari to consider the single issue of whether there was probable cause for the arrest. The majority opinion for the Court, however, held that the Fourth Amendment issue had not been properly preserved for appellate review. Ray v. State, 435 Md. 1 , 76 A.3d 1143 (2013).

The Court of Appeals opinion is not pertinent to the issue now before us. ¹⁶² The Belated Contention Despite having slept quietly on this complaint for three and one-half years, the appellant now raises the contention that his sentence of ten years’ incarceration with all but four years suspended was an inherently illegal sentence under Rule 4-345(a) because it exceeded the legal cap imposed upon it that had been bargained for as a condition of his plea of not guilty on an agreed statement of facts. The contention, however tardy, is cognizable. For Auld Lang Syne Whence, then, Rule 4-345(a)’s unique and open-ended filing calendar? Rule 4-345(a), without the loss or gain of a comma, has been with us a long time (since 1951).

The Rules of Criminal Procedure were completely recodified by Order of the Court of Appeals dated April 6, 1984, and effective as of July 1, 1984. What is now Rule 4-345(a) had theretofore been codified, verbatim, as Maryland Rule 774(a). That provision had, in turn, been codified as Maryland Rule 764(a) prior to July 1, 1977. Before a yet earlier rewriting of the Maryland Rules of Procedure, adopted on September 15, 1961 and effective as of January 1, 1962, the provision, in precisely its present language, had been Rule 744(a).

Before 1962, the same unchanged provision had been Rule 10(a) of the Criminal Rules of Practice and Procedure. As Rule 10(a), it may be found, in the verbatim language of Rule 4-345(a) today, in Vol. 3, Horace Flack, Annotated Code of Maryland, Appendix B, General Rules of Practice and Procedure (1951). In Drain v. Warden, 207 Md. 620, 621 , 113 A.2d 422 (1955), the Court referred to this venerable progenitor of today’s rule: “If a sentence is illegal, the trial court may correct it at any time. General Rules of Practice and Procedure, part 4, rule 10.” The General Rules of Practice and Procedure were first adopted by the Court of Appeals in 1941.

The minutes of the meeting of the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure of March 28, 1950, reflect that the reporter “presented for the consideration of the Committee a letter from Chief Judge Ogle Marbury,” reading in part: ¹⁶³ “At the Conference (Judiciary) the question was raised whether judges have power after the expiration of the term, or after 30 days, to reduce or suspend sentences imposed by them in criminal cases. The county judges were practically unanimous in their view that it could not be done, but the city judges seem to be doing it without any definite authority.” Chief Judge Marbury’s request to the Rules Committee had been prompted by a discussion among judges at the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Judicial Council of Maryland in 1950 in which there was spirited disagreement over whether a trial judge possessed any authority to correct an illegal sentence or otherwise amend a sentence after the formal term of court in which the sentencing took place had terminated. The minutes of the meeting in Annapolis of May 29, 1951, reflect that the Rules Committee recommended to the Court of Appeals what the Court subsequently adopted as Rule 10(a): “The Court may correct an illegal sentence at any time.” What is now Rule 4-345(a) is virtually identical to an earlier version of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 35. Johnson v. State, 274 Md. 29, 39 , 333 A.2d 37 (1975) (“Rule 35 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure ... is virtually identical to the provisions of Maryland Rule 764a.”).

Federal Rule 35(a) at that time provided, “The court may correct an illegal sentence at any time.” In Berkoff v. Humphrey, 159 F.2d 5, 7 (1947), the Eighth Circuit pointed out that Federal Rule 35 “became effective March 21, 1946, but made no change in existing law.” Thus, with respect to what is now Rule 4-345(a), the limit of legal memory is the 1951 adoption by the Court of Appeals of what then became Rule 10(a) of the Maryland Rules of Practice and Procedure. Beyond 1951, appellate memory runneth not to the contrary. Reason For the Filing Exemption Rule 4-345(a)’s exemption from a filing deadline is, indeed, a very narrow one. Despite the generality of the Rule’s wording, it does not permit the correction “at any time” of any illegality that may have lead to or contributed to the sentence ¹⁶⁴ being challenged.

The illegality referred to by Rule 4-345(a) must be an illegality inherent in the sentence itself as opposed to being some procedural (even constitutional) flaw in the trial resulting in the conviction for which the sentence is imposed or even a flaw in the sentencing procedure itself. Tshiwala v. State, 424 Md. 612, 619 , 37 A.3d 308 (2012), made this preclu-sive limitation on what constitutes an “illegal sentence” crystal clear: “[W]here the sentence imposed is not inherently illegal, and where the matter complained of is a procedural error, the complaint does not concern an illegal sentence for purposes of Rule 4-345(a). A sentence does not become ‘an illegal sentence because of some arguable procedural flaw in the sentencing procedure.’ ” (Emphasis supplied; citations omitted). Johnson v. State, 427 Md. 356, 367 , 47 A.3d 1002 (2012), spoke to the same effect: “The ‘scope of this privilege ... is narrow.’ To constitute an illegal sentence under Rule 4-345(a), ‘the illegality must inhere in the sentence itself, rather than stem from trial court error during the sentencing proceeding.’ Accordingly, ‘we have denied relief pursuant to Rule 4-345(a) because the sentences imposed were not inherently illegal, despite some form of error or alleged injustice.’ ” (Emphasis supplied; citations omitted).

In Matthews v. State, 197 Md.App. 365, 375 , 13 A.3d 834 (2011), rev’d on other grounds, 424 Md. 503 , 36 A.3d 499 (2012), this Court also addressed Rule 4-345(a)’s austerely limited coverage. “Emerging from [a] survey of a quarter of a century of Maryland caselaw is the overarching principle that the values of finality and closure still abide, Rule 4-345(a) has been consistently interpreted to be a narrow window that permits a trial judge to correct at any time a sentence that is obviously and facially illegal in the sense that it is a sentence that the court had never been statutorily authorized to impose. It is not, on the other hand, some unlimited ¹⁶⁵ ‘Reopen, Sesame,’ licensing the court to revisit and to relitigate issues that have long since become faits accompli.” (Emphasis supplied). See also Alston v. State, 425 Md. 326, 339 , 40 A.3d 1028 (2012) (“[T]he most important principle is ‘that, as a general rule, a Rule 4-345(a) motion to correct an illegal sentence is not appropriate when the alleged illegality “did not inhere in the defendant’s sentence.” ’ ”); Montgomery v. State, 405 Md. 67, 74-75 , 950 A.2d 77 (2008) (“A motion to correct an illegal sentence ordinarily can be granted only where there is some illegality in the sentence itself or where no sentence should have been imposed.”); Hoile v. State, 404 Md. 591, 622 , 948 A.2d 30 (2008) (“A sentence is not illegal where the ‘illegality did not inhere in the defendant’s sentence.’ ”); State v. Wilkins, 393 Md. 269, 273 , 900 A.2d 765 (2006) (“A sentence that is not permitted by statute is an illegal sentence.” (Citation omitted)); Randall Book Corp. v. State, 316 Md. 315, 323 , 558 A.2d 715 (1989) (“improper motivation ... does not render the sentence illegal within the meaning of Rule 4-345.”). As this Court explained in Corcoran v. State, 67 Md.App. 252, 255 , 507 A.2d 200 (1986): “The notion of an ‘illegal sentence’ within the contemplation of the Walczak decision deals with substantive law, not procedural law.

It has obvious reference to a sentence which is beyond the statutorily granted power of the judge to impose.” (Emphasis supplied). Chaney v. State, 397 Md. 460, 466-67 , 918 A.2d 506 (2007), spoke of the distinction between “two categories of deficiency.” “A criminal sentence may be deficient and subject to being vacated on appeal for a variety of reasons. Through its adoption of what is now Maryland Rule 4-345 and through its decisional jurisprudence, this Court has created two categories of deficiency and has treated those categories differently. [[Image here]] ¹⁶⁶ “The scope of this privilege, allowing collateral and belated attacks on the sentence and excluding waiver as a bar to relief, is narrow, however. We have consistently defined this category of ‘illegal sentence’ as limited to those situations in which the illegality inheres in the sentence itself; i.e., there either has been no conviction warranting any sentence for the particular offense or the sentence is not a permitted one for the conviction upon which it was imposed and, for either reason, is intrinsically and substantively unlawful.

As we made clear in Randall Book Corp., any other deficiency in the sentence that may be ground for an appellate court to vacate it—impermissible considerations in imposing it, for example—must ordinarily be raised in or decided by the trial court and presented for appellate review in a timely-filed direct appeal.” (Some emphasis supplied; references omitted). In Carlini v. State, 215 Md.App. 415, 419-20 , 81 A.3d 560 (2013), this Court was very clear with respect to the critical distinction. “What is an illegal sentence? That all depends upon what one means by ‘an illegal sentence.’ There are countless illegal sentences in the simple sense. There are sentences that may readily be reversed, vacated, corrected or modified on direct appeal, or even on limited post-conviction review, for a wide variety of procedural glitches and missteps in the sentencing process.

Challenges to such venial illegalities, however, are vulnerable to such common pleading infirmities as non-preservation and limitations-There are, by contrast, illegal sentences in the pluperfect sense. Such illegal sentences are subject to open-ended collateral review. Although both phenomena may casually be referred to as illegal sentences, there is a critically dispositive difference between a procedurally illegal sentencing process and an inherently illegal sentence itself. It is only the later that is grist for the mill of Maryland Rule 4-345(a)[.]” (Emphasis supplied; footnote omitted).

Rule 4-345(a)’s ears are thus closed to “but for” tales of woe. “But for the erroneous hearsay ruling, there would have ¹⁶⁷ been no sentence to be imposed.” Such a plaint would come too late and would not enjoy an exemption from the ordinary filing deadline. Illegalities Inhering in the Sentence Itself To recite that for Rule 4-345(a) applicability, the illegality must inhere in the sentence itself is one thing. Instinctively to be able to identify such a phenomenon is something else again. In pursuit thereof, the use of contrasting examples remains a tried and true learning technique.

The most obvious example of an excessive sentence would be one that, because it is so obvious, is never actually found in the caselaw. The better to understand the category, however, it should nonetheless always be kept in mind. The paradigmatic excessive sentence would be one of eleven years in jail for a crime with a statutory maximum penalty of ten years. The penalty is excessive because it exceeds the penalty authorized by law.

All other inherent illegalities are but more arcane variations on this simple theme. A common example of an inherently illegal sentence is the very pronouncement of a sentence itself in circumstances where no sentence should have been imposed. In Alston v. State, 425 Md. 326, 339 , 40 A.3d 1028 (2012), a re-sentencing of the defendant should never have occurred after a post-conviction hearing had vacated the original sentence and the subsequent reconsideration of that vacating was legally unauthorized. “There is one type of illegal sentence which this Court has consistently held should be corrected under Rule 4-345(a). Where the trial court imposes a sentence or other sanction upon a criminal defendant, and where no sentence or sanction should have been imposed, the criminal defendant is entitled to relief under Rule 4-345(a).” (Emphasis supplied).

Taylor v. State, 407 Md. 137 , 141 n. 4, 963 A.2d 197 (2009) simply mentioned in footnote dicta that historically, “a motion to correct an illegal sentence ... was ‘entertained only where ¹⁶⁸ the alleged illegality was in the sentence itself or the sentence never should have been imposed.’ ” (citation omitted). In State v. Wilkins, 393 Md. 269, 273-74 , 900 A.2d 765 (2006), the Court of Appeals noted in passing that “a motion to correct an illegal sentence can be granted only where there is some illegality in the sentence itself or where no sentence should have been imposed.” (Emphasis supplied). In Ridgeway v. State, 369 Md. 165, 191 , 797 A.2d 1287 (2002), a confusion of counts lead to a situation in which the defendant was sentenced on three charges of assault on which he had been found not guilty. In holding such sentences to have been inherently illegal, the Court of Appeals observed, “[a] court cannot punish a defendant for a crime for which he or she has been acquitted.” An interesting variation on this theme is found in Johnson v. State, 427 Md. 356 , 47 A.3d 1002 (2012), a case in which the defendant should never have been sentenced to 30 years for assault with intent to murder for the simple reason that he had neither been charged with nor convicted of assault with intent to murder. 1 The sentence without an underlying conviction was inherently illegal.

In State v. Garnett, 172 Md.App. 558, 559 , 916 A.2d 393 (2007), this Court held that a sentence ordering restitution should never have been pronounced against a defendant who was found to have been “not criminally responsible.” Under the circumstances, the imposition of restitution, which has been deemed to be a criminal sentence, was inherently illegal. In Moosavi v. State, 355 Md. 651, 662 , 736 A.2d 285 (1999), the Court of Appeals held that a sentence was inherently illegal where the defendant had been charged and convicted “under the wrong statute.” And see, Campbell v. State, 325 Md. 488, 508-09 , 601 A.2d 667 (1992). In Jones v. State, 384 Md. 669 , 866 A.2d 151 (2005), on one of the four counts on which the defendant was apparently convicted, the guilty verdict, not ¹⁶⁹ withstanding being reflected on the verdict sheet, got overlooked with respect to being orally announced in open court. The sentence on that count was held to have been inherently illegal.

Another common category of inherently illegal sentences is that in which the sentence imposes some collateral sanction that has not been authorized by the sentencing statute. It was actually this Court that blazed the trail for recognizing this variety of sentencing illegality. Frequently, when multiple charges were brought against a single defendant for multiple crimes inflicting property damage on multiple victims, it was a common practice, simply as a matter of judicial economy, to convict the defendant of one of the crimes but then to order him to pay restitution to all of the victims. Maryland first addressed this practice in the opinion of this Court in Mason v. State, 46 Md.App. 1, 9 , 415 A.2d 315 (1980).

We held that “the open-ended order to make additional restitution to a wide variety of ‘victims’ to be determined by the probation department ... exceeded the sentencing authority of the court.” (Emphasis supplied). A sentence in excess of what the legislature has authorized is, ipso facto, inherently illegal. Five years later, the Court of Appeals confirmed Mason’s result in Walczak v. State, 302 Md. 422 , 488 A.2d 949 (1985). The Court of Appeals held, 302 Md. at 429 , 488 A.2d 949 : “[Restitution is punishment for the crime of which the defendant has been convicted.

Restitution depends on the existence of that crime, and the statute authorizes the court to order restitution only where the court is otherwise authorized to impose punishment.” Notwithstanding Mason, Walczak became the marquee case. Other collateral sanctions have been held to render a sentence inherently illegal where the type of sanction imposed by the sentence has not been authorized by statute. In Holmes v. State, 362 Md. 190 , 763 A.2d 737 (2000), the imposition of home detention as a condition of probation was held to have been an inherently illegal sentence. “A sentence that is not permitted by statute is an illegal sentence. A defendant cannot ¹⁷⁰ consent to an illegal sentence.” 362 Md. at 195-96 , 763 A.2d 737 .

(Citations omitted). See also, Bailey v. State, 355 Md. 287, 300 , 734 A.2d 684 (1999) (the same). In Montgomery v. State, 405 Md. 67, 81 , 950 A.2d 77 (2008), the trial judge, after finding a violation of probation, imposed a sentence to be served of ten years, but deferred the reporting date of that sentence for three years with announced contingencies and dependent on the defendant’s behavior. The convoluted arrangement was not authorized by statute and was, therefore, held to be an illegal sentence within the contemplation of Rule 4-345(a).

Carlini v. State, 215 Md.App. at 438 , 81 A.3d 560 , summed up the common characteristics of all of these examples of Rule 4-345(a) inherent sentence illegality: “The common denominator in all of these instances of Rule 4-345(a) sentence illegality is that once the objective outer boundary markers for the sentence have been established, the illegality that inheres in the sentence itself is obvious. Even if all of the antecedent proceedings had been procedurally impeccable, the illegality of the sentence is facial and self-evident.” (Emphasis supplied). Illegalities Not Inhering in The Sentence Conversely, numerous opinions hold that although hearings on Rule 4-345(a) motions may reveal numerous procedural errors that might have called for reversals if timely raised on direct appeal, many of those errors would not be cognizable under Rule 4-345(a) because they were errors that did not inhere in the sentence itself. In Randall Book Corp. v. State, 316 Md. 315 , 558 A.2d 715 (1989), a bookstore convicted of selling pornographic magazines received a fine of $500 for each of 116 convictions, a penalty amounting to $58,000.

The Court of Appeals held that a claim of double jeopardy, consisting of multiple punishments for a single offense, would be cognizable as an inherently illegal sentence, but further found that factually not to be the ¹⁷¹ case. It noted in its discussion, however, that the “Appellant’s remaining contention, that the sentencing judge was motivated by impermissible considerations, would not fall into the same category.” 316 Md. at 322 , 558 A.2d 715 . Such an illegality, if arguendo assumed to be true, would be in the sentencing judge’s head and not inherent in the sentence itself. State v. Kanaras, 357 Md. 170 , 742 A.2d 508 (1999) was an unusual case.

The prisoner had originally been sentenced to a term of life imprisonment, which included the possibility of parole. Subsequent activities by the Parole Commission, the Commissioner of Correction, and the Governor had the effect of changing the prisoner’s sentence to one of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The Court of Special Appeals agreed with the prisoner’s claim that this governmental action had the effect of increasing the prisoner’s sentence, ex post facto, and creating thereby an inherently illegal sentence pursuant to Rule 4-345(a). In reversing this Court, the Court of Appeals held that the admitted impropriety was, although illegal, was not inherent in the sentence itself. “The prior acts of the Parole Commission and the Commissioner of Correction, which had the effect of denying inmates in Kanaras’s position the parole consideration to which they were entitled under the statutory scheme, did not render illegal Kanaras’s sentence.

The illegality was in the conduct of the Parole Commission and the Commissioner of Correction; it did not inhere in Kanaras’s sentence. ... A motion under Rule 4-345(a) to correct an illegal sentence, [ ] was not an appropriate action.” (Emphasis supplied). In Tshiwala v. State, 424 Md. at 620, 37 A.3d 308 , the Court of Appeals held that the alleged procedural improprieties of a sentence review panel were not cognizable under Rule 4-345(a). In Chaney v. State, 397 Md. at 467 , 918 A.2d 506 , a complaint that there was no evidentiary foundation for an award of restitution was not an illegality inherent in the sentence itself.

Baker v. State, 389 Md. 127 , 883 A.2d 916 (2005), was a death penalty case. Empirical studies tending to ¹⁷² show that there was both racial and geographic bias in the imposition of the death penalty did not show any inherent illegality in the sentence itself. Evans v. State, 389 Md. 456, 462-65 , 886 A.2d 562 (2005) (the same). See also, Taylor v. State, 407 Md. 137 , 141 n. 4, 963 A.2d 197 (2009).

The Court of Appeals held in Hoile v. State, 404 Md. 591, 620-23 , 948 A.2d 30 (2008), that a sentence imposed on the basis of a reconsideration granted in violation of the victim’s statutory rights was not an illegal sentence within the contemplation of Rule 4-345(a). Pollard v. State, 394 Md. 40 , 904 A.2d 500 (2006), dealt with a claim by a prisoner that his sentence of life imprisonment was illegal because the sentencing judge was unaware that he possessed the discretion to suspend all or part of the sentence. Such error or illegality, however, did not inhere in the sentence itself. “The sentence imposed was neither illegal, in excess of that prescribed for the offense ..., nor were the terms of the sentence itself statutorily or constitutionally invalid.” 394 Md. at 42 , 904 A.2d 500 . State v. Wilkins, 393 Md. 269 , 900 A.2d 765 (2006) involved the same failure of a sentencing judge to realize that he possessed discretion in the imposition of a sentence.

The Court of Appeals held: “We hold that a sentencing judge’s failure to recognize his or her right to exercise discretion in the imposition of a sentence does not render the sentence illegal within the meaning of Md. Rule 4-345(a).” 393 Md. at 272 , 900 A.2d 765 . (Emphasis supplied; footnote omitted). As we compare illegalities that are inherent in the sentence with illegalities that are not, the observation of Carlini v. State, 215 Md.App. at 431 , 81 A.3d 560 , helps to put that comparison in perspective. “A distinction that is sometimes difficult for the zealous advocate to appreciate is that it is not the degree or virulence of the illegality that makes one allegedly flawed sentence cognizable under Rule 4-345(a) while another (perhaps even more flagrantly flawed) is completely immune ¹⁷³ from review. Rule 4-345(a)’s threshold concern is not with the severity of the alleged infirmity but only with its situs.” (Emphasis supplied).

This then was the state of Rule 4-345(a) law through 2010. For an illegality, even when proved, to invoke the sanction of the rule, the sentence, either in its length or in its imposition of some other sanction, had to be somehow in excess of what had been expressly authorized by the legislature. The focus was on the sentencing statute itself. Courts could readily measure the sentence then being challenged against the statute.

Until 2010, therefore, a Rule 4-345(a) hearing typically did not require any fact-finding. The hearing was essentially limited to legal argument. With respect to such argument, it was seldom necessary to look upstream to some earlier point along the adjudicative continuum. The boundary markers that were relied upon to measure the inherent legality of the sentence were well settled and essentially immutable.

The Cuffley Trilogy: From Statutory Sentencing Caps to Negotiated Sentencing Caps In a 14-month period between October of 2010 and January of 2012, the world of Rule 4-345(a) was transformed from a relatively obscure enclave of only infrequent challenges into a beehive of adjudicative activity. This appeal is at the epicenter of that beehive. The transformative agent was a trilogy of opinions: Cuffley v. State, 416 Md. 568 , 7 A.3d 557 (2010); Baines v. State, 416 Md. 604 , 7 A.3d 578 (2010); and Matthews v. State, 424 Md. 503 , 36 A.3d 499 (2012). (“the Cuffley Trilogy”).

For the first time in a Rule 4-345(a) context, the Trilogy recognized a binding plea bargain, agreed to by a judge, as an effective modality for establishing an upper limit on a sentence. Any sentence in excess of that limit would be as inherently illegal under Rule 4-345(a) as would be a sentence in excess of a statutory limit. This was no minor change. Rule 4-345(a) was transformed from a relatively esoteric challenge to a sentence into a hub of busy post-conviction activity.

With the introduction of the plea bargain into the equation, several adjustments in Rule 4-345(a) practice became inevit ¹⁷⁴ able. Prior to the introduction of a plea bargain as a binding upper limit on sentences, little fact-finding was required in Rule 4-345(a) cases because a controlling statute, inflexibly, was what it was. There could be little, if any, argument about the statute’s very existence or about its express meaning. That world of comfortable certainty, however, now had to be left behind.

Fact-finding, with all that it entails, now takes on far greater significance with sometimes the very existence of the plea agreement having to be hammered out on an ad hoc case by case basis, as well as the meaning and the understanding of the plea agreement. To what extent, moreover, will the rules of statutory interpretation or contract interpretation now come into play in interpreting a plea agreement? It is a brave new world, with many still unanswered (and some still unasked) questions. For analytic clarity, it also behooves us to remember that in a Rule 4-345(a) case involving a plea bargain, we have not substituted a negotiated sentencing limitation for a statutory sentencing limitation.

We have simply superimposed a new and secondary limitation on the older and primary limitation. Although in a plea negotiation case, attention will inevitably focus on the negotiated limitation, an illegality might theoretically inhere in a violation of either limitation. With plea bargains, we have added, not substituted an element to the mixture. See generally, Carlini v. State, 215 Md.App. at 421-22, 450-56 , 81 A.3d 560 , for where precisely restitution issues, for example, fit into the larger argument.

The promulgation of the Cuffley Trilogy was truly a watershed. The Trilogy vastly expanded the potential for legitimate Rule 4-345(a) challenges. Construing the meaning of a plea bargain, moreover, is a far more complicated and ad hoc exercise than was ever the construing of a statute in the simpler pre-Cuffley era. Rule 4-345(a) has taken on a much larger life and Maryland law is still adjusting to it.

The Road to Cuffley The road to Cuffley had already been well paved by Dotson v. State, 321 Md. 515 , 583 A.2d 710 (1991), though Dotson was ¹⁷⁵ not itself a Rule 4-345(a) case. Albeit in the context of a direct appeal rather than of a Rule 4-345(a) motion, Dotson held, effectively for the first time, that a sentence in excess of an upper limit imposed by a binding plea bargain is illegal for precisely the same reason that a sentence would be illegal if it were in excess of an upper limit imposed by statute. The Court of Appeals emphasized the invaluable role that plea bargaining has come to play in the life of the criminal justice system. See, Santobello v. New York, 404 U.S. 257, 260 , 92 S.Ct. 495 , 30 L.Ed.2d 427 (1971); State v. Brockman, 277 Md. 687, 692-94 , 357 A.2d 376 (1976); Banks v. State, 56 Md.App. 38, 51 , 466 A.2d 69 (1983); and Sweetwine v. State, 42 Md.App. 1, 13 , 398 A.2d 1262 (1979), aff'd, 288 Md. 199 , 421 A.2d 60 (1980).

Dotson explained that if a defendant could not depend upon judicial enforcement of the plea bargain, it would have a calamitous impact on the very institution of plea bargaining. “If a defendant could not rely upon the plea bargain, the chilling effect upon the very institution of plea bargaining would be devastating.” 321 Md. at 524 , 583 A.2d 710 . Turning to the plight of Dotson himself, a binding plea bargain, worked out between the defense and the State and with the full formal approval of the sentencing judge, had established that Dotson would receive a sentence of no more than 15 years for two second-degree sexual offenses. Following the acceptance of Dotson’s guilty plea, the judge properly sentenced him to a term of 15 years. A subsequent sentencing review panel, however, vacated that sentence and imposed sentences yielding a total of 30 years.

Dotson appealed that aggregate sentence as illegal. The Court of Appeals left no doubt that a sentencing limit imposed by a plea bargain has the same legal effect as a sentencing limit imposed by a statute, and that a sentence in excess of either limit, by a sentence review panel or by the original sentencing judge, is illegal per se. “Generally, the maximum sentence allowable by law is that designated by the Legislature. As we have seen, the Legislature authorized imprisonment for not more than 20 years ¹⁷⁶ upon conviction of a second degree sexual offense. Therefore, as a general rule, Dotson was subject to imprisonment for a total of 40 years.

The convictions here, however, were obtained by guilty pleas tendered under a plea agreement. The aspect of the agreement which motivated the pleas was that if they met the required criteria for acceptance, the judge would impose a sentence not to exceed a total of 15 years. ... When the judge accepted the pleas, the agreement as to punishment came into full bloom; it stood approved by the judge. Thereafter, the agreement was inviolate, and the judge was required under the dictate of Rule 4-243(c)(3) to embody in the judgment the agreed sentence.

Our rules have the force of law. It follows, that, inasmuch as 15 years was the harshest sentence that could be imposed under the circumstances, 15 years stood as the maximum allowable by law.” 321 Md. at 522-23 , 583 A.2d 710 . (Emphasis supplied; citations omitted). See also, Tweedy v. State, 380 Md. 475, 479 , 845 A.2d 1215 (2004) (“Because we find that the Circuit Court ... imposed a sentence which exceeded the terms of the plea agreement, we shall vacate the sentence and remand for resentencing.”).

In Cuffley the Court of Appeals built upon Dotson and held that once a trial judge accepts a plea agreement entered into by the defendant and the State, agreeing to be bound by its terms, any sentence then imposed in excess of that negotiated upper limit is an inherently illegal sentence under Rule 4-345(a), in exactly the same way that a sentence in excess of the statutory maximum would be. “We therefore hold that, regardless of whether the sentencing term is clear or ambiguous, the court breached the agreement by imposing a sentence that exceeded a total of eight years’ incarceration. The sentence is illegal and, upon Petitioner’s motion, the Circuit Court should have corrected it to conform to a sentence for which Petitioner bargained and upon which he relied in pleading guilty.” ¹⁷⁷ 416 Md. at 586, 7 A.3d 557 . (Emphasis supplied). Thus, just as a sentence of eleven years is illegal if it exceeds a cap of ten years imposed by a statute, so too is a sentence of eleven years illegal if it exceeds a cap of ten years imposed by a plea agreement.

Baines, decided the same day, was simply in the slipstream of Cuffley. In its Matthews v. State, however, the Court of Appeals had occasion to make explicit what in Cuffley and Baines had been only implicit. Because Cuffley had never expressly said that it was overruling earlier law that limited Rule 4-345(a) sentencing illegalities to breaches of the sentencing statute, the Court of Special Appeals in its Matthews v. State, 197 Md.App. at 377 , 13 A.3d 834 , declined to follow what it deemed to be a mere implication. “In the meantime, we decline to treat as authoritative precedent what is, at most, sub-silentio implication.” This Court had held that a breach of a plea agreement with respect to sentencing did not create an inherently illegal sentence pursuant to Rule 4-345(a). It fell, therefore, to the Court of Appeals in its Matthews v. State, 424 Md. at 514, 36 A.3d 499 , to make explicit what had theretofore been only implicit. “To our knowledge, we have not had the occasion before now to respond directly to a fully briefed argument to that effect.

So, we