Williams v. State

GILBERT, Chief Judge. Two outstanding authorities on the common law, Sir Edward Coke and Sir Matthew Hale 1 disagree as to wheth ⁴¹⁴ er a child born alive but who dies as a result of an injury sustained in útero is a homicide victim. In this case we are called upon to decide which of those distinguished legal scholars Maryland should follow. Our course shall determine whether Andre Williams is guilty of manslaughter of a newborn infant or not guilty of any offense insofar as the infant is concerned.

Before beginning our discussion of the law, we shall briefly recount the eldritch facts of the matter. The Facts As he returned home from his place of employment, Williams encountered Lamont Jones who wanted Williams to engage with him in fisticuffs. Jones was angry because Williams refused to surrender a photograph which allegedly depicted Williams engaged in a sexual activity with Jones’s girlfriend. In an attempt to gain possession of the photograph, Jones took Williams’s wallet and ran.

Williams then entered his home and called the police. Shortly thereafter, an intermediary, an acquaintance of both Jones and Williams, endeavored to return the wallet to Williams, but the latter refused to accept it. When Williams went out of his home, he saw Jones approaching, carrying a lead pipe. Jones swung three times at Williams with the pipe.

Williams retreated into his house. When he reemerged, he was armed with a bow and arrow. He drew the arrow as he ran to the street corner. Williams testified that he had “cooled-off”; but when he maladroitly attempted to release the tension on the drawn arrow, it discharged and penetrated the body of a passerby, Jewel Lyles.

The police arrived to find Ms. Lyles lying on the ground, bleeding profusely. Williams, who remained at the scene, told police that he had shot her with the arrow. ⁴¹⁵ Lyles was nine months pregnant at the time of the incident. She was rushed to the emergency room of Johns Hopkins Hospital where it was determined that the arrow lacerated her vena cava. Resuscitative efforts proved unsuccessful, and the baby was delivered by caesarean section.

Ms. Lyles died from the massive loss of blood she sustained as a result of the wounding. The baby survived her for seventeen hours, but it too expired from the injury it received in útero, the result, we think, of “the ... arrows of outrageous [misjfortune.” 2 The infant’s death was due to a lack of oxygen to the fetus which in turn was caused by the mother’s massive loss of blood. 3 Andre Williams was convicted by a jury in the Circuit " Court for Baltimore City (Bothe, J.) of two counts of manslaughter and one count of carrying a weapon openly t intent to injure. He was sentenced to consecutive terms totaling twenty-three years imprisonment. Williams raises a pentad of issues for our review, namely: I. May appellant be convicted of manslaughter of an infant born alive but who because of appellant’s actions sustained a fatal injury in útero?

II

Did the trial court err in refusing to propound certain proposed voir dire questions?

III

Did the trial court err in refusing to grant defendant’s instruction concerning the deadly weapons offense?

IV

Was the jury improperly instructed with respect to the defenses of accident and abandonment of criminal intent? V. Were the sentences based on improper considerations? ⁴¹⁶ The Law The Maryland Constitution, Declaration of Rights, Article V, provides: “That the Inhabitants of Maryland are entitled to the Common Law of England, and the trial by Jury, according to the course of that Law, and to the benefit of such of the English statutes as existed on the Fourth day of July, seventeen hundred and seventy-six; and which, by experience, have been found applicable to their local and other circumstances, and have been introduced, used and practiced by the Courts of Law or Equity; and also of all Acts of Assembly in force on the first day of June, eighteen hundred and sixty-seven; except such as may have since expired, or may be inconsistent with the provisions of this Constitution; subject, nevertheless, to the revision of, and amendment or repeal by, the Legislature of this State. And the Inhabitants of Maryland are also entitled to all property derived to them from, or under the Charter granted by His Majesty Charles the First to Caecilius Calvert, Baron of Baltimore.” The Court of Appeals in 1821 declared: “Whether particular parts of the common law are applicable to our local circumstances and situation, and our general code of laws and jurisprudence, is a question that comes within the province of the Courts of justice, and is to be decided by them.” State v. Buchanan, 5 H. & J. 317, 365-66 (1821). Decisions by the Courts of England subsequent to July 4, 1776, are not part of the common law of Maryland.

Id. It is beyond question that in this State manslaughter is a common law felony. Connor v. State, 225 Md. 543 , 171 A.2d 699 (1961); State v. Gibson, 4 Md.App. 236 , 242 A.2d 575 (1968). The crime is not defined by statute.

All that Md.Ann. Code art. 27, § 387 (Manslaughter) does is prescribe the penalty for the crime. Gilbert & Moylan, Maryland Criminal Law: Practice and Procedure § 1.7. ⁴¹⁷ I. Having established that the common law applies to the incident, we are then left with the question of whose version of the common law—Coke’s or Hale’s—is applicable to the infant’s death. Did Williams commit the felony of manslaughter, or is what he did a regrettable but non-punishable incident? Williams asserts that, under the common law of England, as applicable in Maryland, pursuant to Article V of the Declaration of Rights, no homicide is committed whenever an infant who is born alive dies as a result of injuries sustained in útero.

To bolster his argument, he quotes from Lord Hale, who declared the common law of England to be: “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 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.” 1 Hale, Pleas of the Crown 433 (1736). As further support for his position, Williams cites Rex v. Pulley, 5 Car. & P. 539 (1833). That case involved a defendant charged with the murder, during the birthing process, of her illegitimate infant. The defendant was adjudged not guilty.

A reading of the case makes clear that the court concluded the infant was not born alive but had died during childbirth. Appellant has also referred to the criticism in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 134-36 , 93 S.Ct. 705, 717-19 , 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973), of Lord Coke’s position. Without venturing into the relative merits of Roe , we observe that the discussion by the Court concerning Coke’s views was limited to consid ⁴¹⁸ eration of voluntary abortion after quickening. It did not address the matter now before us.

Roe is, in a word, inapposite. Lord Coke’s interpretation of the common law is diametrically opposite to that of Hale. In his Institutes Coke wrote that, under the common law of England: “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 born alive ... and so was the law holden in Bracton’s time____” 3 Coke, Institutes ⁵⁰ (1648) (emphasis supplied). To undercut Coke’s position and simultaneously strengthen that of Hale, appellant refers us to Sir James Stephens’s writings on the history of the common law.

In an animadversion of Lord Coke, Sir James penned, “A more disorderly mind than Coke’s and one less gifted with the power of analyzing common words it would be impossible to find.” Stephens, 2 A History of the Criminal Law of England 211 (1883). We think the quotation from Stephens’s work is carved less in stone than in ice, and we shall proceed to melt it with the warm breath of judicial ratiocination. Sir William Blackstone, one of the foremost legal authorities on the common law, repeated Coke’s quotation in the Commentaries. 1 Blackstone, Commentaries 129-130 (1765). Furthermore, the passage in Coke is cited as authority for the court’s decision in Rex v. Senior, 1 Moody C.C. 346 (1832).

There, the defendant “broke and compressed” the skull of a fetus during childbirth. The injury occurred while the fetus was “in ventre sa mere,” or prior to its being born alive. The baby was born alive but died of the injury sustained while in the birth canal. The defendant was convicted of manslaughter. ⁴¹⁹ Another eminent writer, William Hawkins, serjeant at law, said in the “Author’s Preface” to his Pleas of the Crown: “The treatise published under the name of Sir Matthew Hale, is indeed very useful, and written in a clear method, and with great learning and judgment; but it is certainly very imperfect in the whole, and seems to be only a model or plan of a work of this kind, which is said to have been intended by him.” Hawkins iterates Coke’s view of the common law and states: “And it was anciently holden, that the causing of an abortion, by giving a potion to, or striking a woman big with child, was murder.

But at this day it is said to be a great misprison only, and not murder, unless the child be born alive and die thereof, in which case it seems clearly to be murder, notwithstanding some opinions to the contrary. And in this respect also, the common law seems to be agreeable to the Mosaical, which as to this purpose is thus expressed: ‘If men strive and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow, he shall be