Williams v. State

MURPHY, Chief Judge. The question presented is whether, under the common law of Maryland, the crime of manslaughter may be committed when an infant, born alive, dies shortly thereafter as a result of wounds criminally inflicted upon the infant’s pregnant mother. I. On June 1, 1987, the appellant Williams and Lamont Jones became embroiled in an argument over a photograph which allegedly depicted Williams engaged in sexual activity with Jones’s girlfriend. In an attempt to obtain the photograph, Jones took Williams’s wallet and ran off.

Williams entered his home and called the police. Upon emerging, he saw Jones approaching him with a lead pipe. After Jones swung at him three times, Williams retreated to his house. When he re-emerged, Williams was armed with a bow and arrow.

As he pursued Jones, he drew the arrow. He yelled to Jewel Lyles, a pedestrian, to “watch out” immediately before releasing the arrow in an apparent effort to shoot Jones. The arrow struck Lyles, lacerating her vena cava. She died from the massive loss of blood which she suffered as a result of the wound. ⁶⁷⁹ Lyles was nine months’ pregnant at the time of the shooting.

Her baby was born alive an hour before Lyles died; the baby died seventeen hours later as a result of the injury inflicted upon her mother. Williams was convicted by a jury of two counts of manslaughter and one count of carrying a weapon openly with intent to injure. He was sentenced to consecutive terms of ten, ten, and three years imprisonment. On appeal, the judgments were affirmed by the Court of Special Appeals.

Williams v. State, 77 Md.App. 411 , 550 A.2d 722 (1988). We subsequently granted Williams’s petition for a writ of certiorari. The Court of Special Appeals recognized that manslaughter is a common law felony in Maryland. See Connor v. State, 225 Md. 543 , 171 A.2d 699 (1961).

It therefore focused on the common law of England, as required by Article 5 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights. 1 In determining the status of the Maryland common law, Chief Judge Gilbert, in a scholarly opinion for the court, primarily considered the writings of Lord Hale and Lord Coke. The court first acknowledged Hale’s view that it was neither murder nor manslaughter if an infant, born alive, died as a result of injuries criminally inflicted upon the mother during pregnancy. 77 Md.App. at 417 , 550 A.2d 722 . As stated in 1 Hale, Pleas of the Crown 438 (1736): “If a woman be quick or great with child, if she take or another give her any potion to make an abortion, or if a ⁶⁸⁰ man strike her, whereby the child within her is killed, it is not murder nor manslaughter by the law of England, because it is not yet in rerum natura, tho it be a great crime, and by the judicial law of Moses was punishable by death, nor can it legally be made known whether it were killed or not, so it is, if after such child were born alive, and baptized, and after die of the stroke given to the mother, this is not homicide.” Lord Coke, the intermediate appellate court noted, was of a totally opposite mind. His view of the English common law was that a criminal homicide resulted if the child, born alive, died as a result of wounds inflicted upon the mother while the child was in the mother’s womb.

Id. at 418 , 550 A.2d 722 . As stated in 3 Coke, Institutes 50 (1648): “If a woman be quick with childe, and by a potion or otherwise killeth it in her wombe; or if a man beat her, whereby the childe dieth in her body, and she is delivered of a dead childe, this is a great misprison, and no murder; but if the childe be born alive and dieth of the potion, battery, or other cause, this is murder: for in law it is accounted a reasonable creature in rerum natura, when it is bom alive ... and so was the law holden in Bracton’s time....” The intermediate appellate court found that these commentators and authorities were aligned with Coke’s view of the common law: 1 Blackstone, Commentaries 129-130 (1765); 1 Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown § 16 (1824); 1 Warren on Homicide § 71 (1914); and 2 Wharton’s Criminal Law § 114 (1979). After noting that a number of American states accepted Coke's position, the court concluded that the English common law recognized Coke’s “bom alive rule.” Specifically, it said that “the common law of Maryland is when a child is born alive but subsequently dies as a result of injury sustained in útero the death of the child is homicide. It follows that the person who caused the injury to the fetus is chargeable with homicide.” 77 Md.App. at 420 , 550 A.2d 722 . ⁶⁸¹ II.

The appellant sides with Hale’s view of the English common law; he suggests that Hale was “generally considered a more reliable writer of the criminal law than Coke.” He finds support in W. Lambarde, Eirenarcha: or the Office of the Justice of the Peace 226-227 (Rev. ed. 1592) and M. Dalton, Country Justice 348 (1690). Williams says that it is evident that these writers, along with Hale, correctly stated the