State v. Clements

Barbera, C.J. In 1989, Respondent Phillip James Clements was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, and other crimes arising from the same incident. He was seventeen years old at the time of the murders, trial, and sentencing. He was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences with the possibility of parole for each of the three counts of murder and the two counts of attempted murder, plus a total of 23 years on the lesser counts, to be served concurrently with the life sentences. Clements's direct appeal and petition for post-conviction relief were unsuccessful.

Twenty-seven years later, in 2016, Clements filed a Motion to Correct Illegal Sentence under Maryland Rule 4-345(a) based on recent United States Supreme Court precedent involving life sentences for juvenile offenders. The Circuit Court for Prince George's County granted Clements's motion and vacated the entirety of the sentence originally imposed. The court scheduled a new sentencing hearing some months ahead to allow the court time to review the exhibits offered at the hearing on the motion, review the Supreme Court cases on the subject, and receive an updated presentence investigation report. The State appealed within 30 days of the court's ruling.

Clements filed a Motion to Dismiss in the Court of Special Appeals. He argued that the mere grant of a motion to correct an illegal sentence, without imposition of a new sentence, is not an appealable final judgment from which the State has the right to appeal. The Court of Special Appeals granted Clements's motion and dismissed the State's appeal for want of a final judgment. We agree and affirm the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals.

I. Facts and Procedural History On the morning of January 21, 1989, then-seventeen-year-old Phillip Clements went to Kathryn Gatlin's apartment intending to rob her for money to buy crack cocaine. He previously lived in the home of Ms. Gatlin, who was the grandmother of Clements's former girlfriend. When Clements arrived after a night of consuming multiple drugs including cocaine and PCP, he found Ms. Gatlin at home. Also present were Ms. Gatlin's adult daughters, Nancy Barowski and Toni Adams; Ms. Gatlin's developmentally disabled adult son, John Brian Barowski; and Nancy's son, Donald Thomas "Tommy" Hughes, who was fourteen years old at the time of trial.

Ms. Gatlin gave Clements breakfast but refused to give him money. Clements then repeatedly struck each of the five family members in the head with a barbell pole. He left the apartment with money taken from Ms. Gatlin's and Ms. Adams's purses and fled in Ms. Adams's car. Nancy and John Barowski were pronounced dead on the scene, and Ms. Gatlin died from her injuries one week later in the hospital.

Toni Adams and Tommy Hughes suffered serious injuries. Later on the day of the crime, Clements gave a full confession to the police. He was charged as an adult in the Circuit Court for Prince George's County with three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, three counts of armed robbery, and three counts of openly carrying a deadly weapon, among other crimes. After his motion to be removed to the jurisdiction of the juvenile court was denied, Clements waived his right to a jury trial.

He was tried before the court in August 1989. The court found Clements guilty on all counts and sentenced him to five life sentences with the possibility of parole-one for each count of murder and attempted murder-to be served consecutively, with additional sentences for robbery and openly carrying a deadly weapon to run concurrently with the life sentences. On direct appeal, the Court of Special Appeals affirmed the judgment of the circuit court, and this Court denied Clements's petition for writ of certiorari. A three-judge panel of the circuit court reviewed the sentence and left it unchanged.

Clements's subsequent motion for modification of the sentence also was denied. Clements's post-conviction petition was denied in the circuit court in 1998, and his federal habeas corpus claim was denied on the merits in the U.S. District Court. Clements v. Corcoran , No. CA-98-2086-CCB (D. Md. Mar. 11, 1999). The Motion to Correct an Illegal Sentence and the Procedural Aftermath In 2016, Clements filed in the Circuit Court for Prince George's County a Motion to Correct Illegal Sentence pursuant to Maryland Rule 4-345(a).

On December 2, 2016, the circuit court conducted a hearing on the motion, at which Clements argued that his sentence was unconstitutional under Graham v. Florida , 560 U.S. 48 , 130 S.Ct. 2011 , 176 L.Ed.2d 825 (2010), Miller v. Alabama , 567 U.S. 460 , 132 S.Ct. 2455 , 183 L.Ed.2d 407 (2012), and Montgomery v. Louisiana , --- U.S. ----, 136 S.Ct. 718 , 193 L.Ed.2d 599 (2016). Counsel also referred to Tatum v. Arizona , --- U.S. ----, 137 S.Ct. 11 , 11, 196 L.Ed.2d 284 (2016), a two-sentence per curiam order granting Tatum's motion "for leave to proceed in forma pauperis and the petition for a writ of certiorari," vacating the judgment, and remanding the case "to the Court of Appeals of Arizona, Division Two for further consideration in light of Montgomery v. Louisiana ." Justice Sotomayor wrote separately to explain that Tatum's case was one of five such cases from Arizona then pending in the Supreme Court, in none of which did "the sentencing judges address[ ] the question Miller and Montgomery require a sentencer to ask: whether the petitioner was among the very 'rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility.' " Id. at 12 (Sotomayor, J., concurring) (quoting Montgomery , 136 S.Ct. at 734 ). In support of the motion to correct the sentence, Clements contended that the five consecutive life sentences, in the aggregate, constitute a de facto sentence of life without parole in violation of Graham , Miller , and Montgomery . 1 He further contended that he does not have a meaningful opportunity for release consistent with those Supreme Court cases, given the regulations and processes governing parole consideration for juvenile offenders serving life sentences in Maryland. The court heard arguments of Clements's counsel and the State, and then informed the parties that the court would take the motion "under advisement to look at all of the cases that were cited as well as the exhibits that have been admitted." The parties returned to circuit court on January 6, 2017, at which time the court resumed the hearing, granted Clements's Rule 4-345(a) motion, and explained the reasons for doing so.

The court stated that the sentencing judge had failed to undertake the particularized analysis required by Miller and Montgomery when sentencing juveniles to life without parole, thereby rendering illegal the five consecutive life sentences that were imposed in 1989. Consequently, the court vacated the original sentence and scheduled a resentencing hearing, which later was deferred pending resolution of the State's appeal to the Court of Special Appeals. Clements filed a motion to dismiss the appeal. He argued that the State did not have the right to appeal from the circuit court's order granting his motion to correct an illegal sentence and vacation of the sentence.

Without the imposition of a new sentence, Clements argued, the order was not yet a final judgment for purposes of Maryland Code, Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article ("CJP") § 12-302(c)(3). The intermediate appellate court agreed with Clements. State v. Clements , No. 2607, Sept. Term 2016, 2017 WL 4117887 , at ³ (Md. Ct. Spec. App. Sept. 15, 2017).

That court reasoned that the mere grant of the motion, whether or not accompanied by vacation of the then-extant sentence, did not fall within any of the provisions of CJP § 12-302(c) granting the State the right of appeal in a criminal case under certain limited circumstances. The court dismissed the State's appeal without reaching the merits. We granted the State's petition for writ of certiorari, State v. Clements , 456 Md. 82 , 171 A.3d 612 (2017), to address two questions: 1. Did the Court of Special Appeals err in dismissing the State's appeal? 2.

Did the circuit court err in considering, and granting, Clements's motion to set aside an "illegal" sentence? For reasons that follow, we hold that the Court of Special Appeals did not err in dismissing the State's appeal. We therefore do not reach the second question presented.

II

Standard of Review The question whether a circuit court's order is appealable is a question of law that this Court considers de novo . Monarch Acad. Balt. Campus, Inc. v. Balt.

City Bd. of Sch. Comm'rs , 457 Md. 1 , 40, 175 A.3d 757 (2017).

III

The Parties' Contentions The State contends that the circuit court's order granting Clements's Motion to Correct Illegal Sentence was a final, appealable order. The State lifts from Ruby v. State , 353 Md. 100 , 107, 724 A.2d 673 (1999), the statement that "[a] collateral challenge, by its very nature, is a separate and distinct civil procedure by which a defendant may challenge his or her conviction, sentence, or imprisonment." From there, the State argues that Clements's motion to correct an illegal sentence is a collateral challenge and therefore a "separate and distinct civil procedure" that resulted in the court's grant of Clements's motion and vacation of his sentence. That action by the circuit court, the State further argues, was a "final judgment" entered in a "civil case" and therefore subject to direct appeal under CJP § 12-301. Alternatively, the State asserts that even if the circuit court's order were considered part of a criminal proceeding, CJP § 12-302(c) entitles the State to appeal the circuit court's grant of Clements's motion.

For that proposition, the State points to subsection (c)(3)(ii). That subsection provides that "[t]he State may appeal from a final judgment if the State alleges that the trial judge: ... (ii) Imposed or modified a sentence in violation of the Maryland Rules." Because the circuit court vacated Clements's sentence, the State argues, the circuit court's order purports to grant Clements the right to a new, different sentence, and, by that ruling alone, "modified" the sentence previously imposed. Thus "modified," the State's argument goes, the sentence was a final judgment subject to a direct appeal.

Clements counters that the Court of Special Appeals correctly dismissed the State's appeal of the circuit court's order granting his Motion to Correct Illegal Sentence. Clements first contends that a motion to correct an illegal sentence and subsequent order granting or denying the motion are part of the underlying criminal proceedings. Clements directs us to State v. Kanaras , 357 Md. 170 , 742 A.2d 508 (1999). We made clear in that case that, "[w]hile a motion under Rule 4-345 may be made at any time, it is part of the same criminal proceeding and not a wholly independent action.

The Rule simply grants the trial court limited continuing authority in the criminal case to revise the sentence." Id. at 183-84 , 742 A.2d 508 . Clements argues that this statement from Kanaras supersedes the out-of-context and less precise statement from Ruby , on which the State relies, that a "collateral challenge" to a sentence is a civil proceeding from which a direct appeal will lie under CJP § 12-301, see Ruby , 353 Md. at 107 , 724 A.2d 673 . Because the underlying case was a criminal case, Clements continues, the State may appeal only as authorized by statute. Clements argues that CJP § 12-302(c)(3)(ii) is the only statutory provision that could "conceivably" apply in this case, but it does not authorize this appeal.

As noted above, that provision allows the State to appeal from a final judgment if the State alleges that the trial judge imposed or modified a sentence in violation of the Maryland Rules. Clements then argues that the circuit court's grant of the Rule 4-345(a) motion was not itself a final judgment because the resentencing has not yet occurred. Clements adds that, contrary to the State's view of Ruby , the circuit court did not "impose[ ] or modif[y]" the sentence but, instead, merely