Thanos v. State

⁷¹¹ Digges, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. We granted certiorari in this case to review the propriety of petitioner Jimette A. Thanos’ conviction in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County for attempted shoplifting. The petitioner was initially tried and convicted in the District Court of Maryland on a charging document alleging that she attempted to alter the price tag on an item of merchandise at a local department store, 1 an act which if completed constitutes the crime of shoplifting. See Md. Code (1957,1976 Repl.

Vol. & 1977 Cum. Supp.), Art. 27, § 551 A. Specifically, subsection (a) (4) of section 551A makes it unlawful “[t]o alter, remove, or otherwise disfigure any label or price tag” with the intent to deprive the owner of the item of its use or value. 2 On her de novo appeal to the circuit court, see Md. Code (1974), § 12-401 (c) of the Courts Article, after proceeding in a nonjury trial on an agreed statement of facts, counsel argued, inter alia, that at best the State’s evidence proved only that the price tag had been removed — not that it had been altered. The State thereupon sought to amend the charging document to substitute the word “remove” for “alter,” a request which, over the defendant’s objection, the ⁷¹² circuit court granted; the judge then found the petitioner guilty, observing that “the removal of tags or labels with an intent to deprive the owner of the use, or value, of merchandise is shoplifting under the Code.” Since we conclude the amendment to the charging document which changed the act Ms. Thanos was accused of committing was not simply a matter of form, and hence could not be made unless consented to by the petitioner, the circuit court’s action in permitting the amendment was error. The facts to which the parties agreed in the circuit court were essentially as follows: Jeanne Conigliaro, a salesperson for the Towson branch of Hutzler Bros.

Co., a mercantile establishment, observed the petitioner remove a skirt, vest, and blouse from a rack of women’s clothes in her section of the store and take the three items to a dressing room. After fitting the blouse, the petitioner returned .the vest and skirt to the rack and attempted to purchase the blouse; when she brought it to Ms. Conigliaro, its tag reflected a price of $10.00. The salesperson then told the petitioner that the correct price was $23.00, at which point Ms. Thanos indicated that she did not wish to make the purchase; as it developed, the price tag on the blouse belonged on the vest. Ms. Conigliaro had checked the clothes in her section of the store when she caifie on duty “a couple of hours” before this incident to ascertain that each item had a tag with the appropriate fnarkings, since some items were reduced in price.

Other customers had handled the clothes during the time Ms. Conigliaro was on duty, and that particular rack of items had also been handled by store personnel in order to reflect the reduced sales price. There was no direct evidence that a tag indicating a $23.00 price had been on the blouse when petitioner took it to the fitting room, nor was there any evidence that petitioner had “written on, torn, or otherwise ‘altered’ the original price tag____” After the entry of the judgment of conviction in the circuit court, Ms. Thanos petitioned this Court for a writ of certiorari; we issued the writ. The petitioner argues that if a charging document can be amended on a de novo appeal from a district court conviction, such amendment is limited to matters of form, absent the ⁷¹³ defendant’s consent. 3 This proposition is, of course, elementary, as a perusal of the common law and statutory development of the authority to amend indictments and other charging documents will show. See Gyant v. State, 21 Md. App. 674, 675-84 , 321 A. 2d 815, 815-20 , cert. denied, 272 Md. 742 (1974).

While it is clear that charging documents may only be amended as to matters of form — and this is not disputed by the State — what is less clear is the scope of “matters of form.” The contours of that concept have been largely shaped by contrasting it with amendments which change “matters of substance,” see Md. Rule 713 a, and with amendments which “change the character of the offense charged.” See Md. Dist. Rule 713 a. 4 In this case, the petitioner insists that the change in the charge from “altering” a price tag to “removing” a price tag was a matter of substance; the State urges that the amendment was permissible, since it did not ⁷¹⁴ change the “character of the offense charged.” Assuming without deciding that these two concepts articulate different standards, and that the “character of the offense” test might allow a somewhat broader scope for permissible amendments of a charging document, we think that under either standard the amendment here was improper. We defined what constitutes “substance” in Corbin v. State, 237 Md. 486, 489-90 , 206 A. 2d 809, 811 (1965): “[A]ll facts which must be proved to make the act complained of a crime are matters of substance----” We added that “a criminal charge must so characterize the crime and describe the particular offense so as to give the accused notice of what he is called upon to defend----” Id. at 490 [811] (emphasis added) (quoted in State v. Canova, 278 Md. 483, 498 , 365 A. 2d 988, 997 (1976)). Since the offense here was described as the alteration of a price tag, and since the relevant section of the statute provides that any of three distinct acts — altering, removing, or otherwise disfiguring a price tag — will constitute the crime of shoplifting, clearly a change from “alter” to “remove” is a change in the facts to be proved to make the act a crime and hence is a matter of substance.

We likewise conclude that the amendment of the charging document changed the character of the offense charged. This is a situation in which the statute creates one offense generically — shoplifting — but specifies a number of different “acts, transactions, or means” by which it may be committed. See Ayre v. State, 21 Md. App. 61, 64 , 318 A. 2d 828, 831 (1974). The “offense” charged here was attempted shoplifting; the various means by which that offense may be committed, we think, constitute its “character.” 5 It is inconceivable to us that the character of the offense remains unchanged, no matter which of the several proscribed acts are alleged to have been done, simply because the same generic crime is charged before and after the amendment.

Were that the case, the term “character” would be entirely without meaning. ⁷¹⁵ The State urges, however, that the character of the offense is not changed where the defendant after the amendment is still charged with a violation of the same section of the Code. And indeed in Gray v. State, 216 Md. 410, 416 , 140 A. 2d 643, 646 (1958), in determining that the amendment of a warrant did not change the character of the offense charged in it, we said, by way of dicta, that “[wjhere a violation of the same section of the Code is charged both before and after the amendment, it is not error to permit the amendment.” Insofar as Gray may suggest that a charging document, alleging a violation of a Code section which prohibits several different acts, may be amended to charge an act not alleged in the original document, especially after jeopardy has attached, we hereby specifically repudiate it. As for our holding on the actual facts in Gray , however, the decision retains its precedential value. In that case, the statute forbade both the wearing or carrying of deadly weapons concealed about one’s person and the wearing or carrying of such weapons openly with the intent to injure another.

Md. Code (1951), Art. 27, § 44 (a) (now codified, as amended, at Md. Code (1957, 1976 Repl. Vol.), Art. 27, § 36 (a)). The warrant charged defendant with carrying a deadly weapon and was titled a “concealed weapon” warrant;