Stokes v. State

Per Curiam. After entering pleas of not guilty by reason of insanity, the Appellant, Albert Lionel Stokes, was found guilty by a jury in the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County on four counts of armed robbery and one of kidnapping. Judge Ernest A. Loveless, who presided at the trial, sentenced him to serve forty years in the Maryland Penitentiary. The trial judge followed the M’Naghten-Spencer Rule — enunciated in Spencer v. State, 69 Md. 28 , and subsequent cases —in instructing the jury regarding the test for criminal insanity, and refused the Appellant’s request for an instruction based on the Durham Rule that he was not guilty if his crime was the product of a mental disease or defect.

In this appeal, it is urged: 1. The provisions of Chapter 709 of the Laws of 1967 are, or should be, retroactive. 2. This Court should reconsider and abandon the M’NaghtenSpencer Rule in favor of the test provided in Chapter ■ 709.' ³⁸⁷ The Appellant was tried in October 1966, at which time it was the well settled law of this State that the test for criminal insanity was embodied in the M’Naghten-Spencer Rule. The Rule had been the subject of attack many times in the Court of Appeals.

Armstead v. State, 227 Md. 73 ; Cole v. State, 212 Md. 55 ; Bryant v. State, 207 Md. 565 ; Thomas v. State, 206 Md. 575 . The attacks were renewed in this Court. Bergin v. State, 1 Md. App. 74 ; League v. State, 1 Md. App. 681 . In every instance the Court of Appeals refused to modify the Rule and this Court, in Bergin , adhered to the reasoning of the Court of Appeals that if the Rule were to be modified it must be through legislative, rather than judicial, processes.

In the 1967 Session of the Maryland General Assembly, the Rule was modified by the enactment of Chapter 709 of the Raws of 1967 (Md. Code, Art. 59, Secs. 7-12). The effective date of