Caseflicks

Court of Appeals of Maryland • 1999

Harris v. State

728 A.2d 180 | 353 Md. 596 | 1999 Md. LEXIS 170

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Takeaway

In short, Harris holds that Maryland carjacking is a general-intent offense, so voluntary intoxication cannot excuse a defendant who intentionally uses force or intimidation to take control of another person’s vehicle.

Background

After drinking alcohol and using marijuana with friends, Timothy Harris accepted a ride home from Jack Tipton. Tipton testified that Harris became angry when Tipton refused to drive to Washington, D.C., forcibly removed Tipton from the car, and drove away. Harris testified that he had blacked out after leaving the gathering.

A Prince George’s County grand jury charged Harris with carjacking, unlawful taking of a motor vehicle, and second-degree assault. His defense was voluntary intoxication. He requested an instruction that intoxication could prevent him from forming the specific intent required for both carjacking and unlawful taking. The trial court instructed that voluntary intoxication could negate specific intent, but told the jury that only unlawful taking required specific intent. It instructed on carjacking in the language of Article 27, § 348A. The jury acquitted Harris of unlawful taking but convicted him of carjacking and assault. The Court of Appeals granted certiorari on its own motion to decide whether carjacking is a specific-intent offense.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether Maryland carjacking under Article 27, § 348A is a specific-intent crime, such that voluntary intoxication may negate the required mens rea.

Holding

No. Carjacking is a general-intent crime; the State need prove only that the defendant intentionally committed the prohibited act of obtaining unauthorized possession or control of a vehicle from a person in actual possession by force, violence, intimidation, or threat of force.

Reasoning

Maryland distinguishes general-intent offenses from specific-intent offenses. Specific intent requires more than an intention to commit the immediate prohibited act; it requires an additional, conscious purpose to bring about a further and more remote result. Voluntary intoxication can negate this additional specific intent, but it is not a defense to a general-intent crime.

The text of § 348A defines carjacking as obtaining unauthorized possession or control of a motor vehicle from a person in actual possession through force, violence, intimidation, or threats. It contains no language—such as “with intent to”—requiring a purpose beyond the act of forcibly obtaining control of the vehicle. When the General Assembly intends to create a specific-intent offense, it knows how to say so, as shown by Maryland’s burglary statutes.

Section 348A(e) reinforces that reading. The Legislature expressly provided that it is not a defense that the defendant did not intend permanently to deprive the owner of the vehicle. Having specifically rejected the traditional permanent-deprivation intent associated with theft and robbery, the Legislature did not substitute any other intent-to-deprive requirement. The Court therefore declined to add one judicially.

The statute’s legislative history showed that the General Assembly enacted carjacking as a new, aggravated offense in response to the rise of violent vehicle takings, including the killing of Dr. Pamela Basu. Although the conduct could often be charged under existing crimes, the Legislature sought stronger penalties and an additional prosecutorial tool for this especially dangerous conduct. That purpose supported an offense focused on the forcible acquisition of a vehicle, rather than one requiring proof of a further purpose concerning the duration of deprivation.

The nature of the offense also supports general intent. Once a person intentionally uses force, violence, intimidation, or threats to obtain unauthorized control of another’s vehicle, deprivation of the victim’s control is the immediate and substantially certain result of the act. The statute does not require proof that the accused additionally intended a separate future consequence.

Accordingly, the trial court correctly refused to instruct the jury that voluntary intoxication could negate the mens rea for carjacking. Its instruction properly limited the voluntary-intoxication defense to unlawful taking of a motor vehicle, the offense that required specific intent.

Issue #2

Whether carjacking should be treated as merely a form of robbery or as unauthorized use of a vehicle combined with an assault, thereby importing those offenses’ intent requirements.

Holding

No. Carjacking is a distinct statutory offense, not the equivalent of robbery or unauthorized use, and neither offense is necessarily included in the other.

Reasoning

Maryland applies the elements test to determine whether one offense is a lesser included offense of another. Robbery requires a felonious taking and carrying away of property by force or fear, as well as the specific intent permanently to deprive the owner of the property. Carjacking, by contrast, requires unauthorized possession or control of a motor vehicle from a person in actual possession through force, violence, intimidation, or threats.

Carjacking has elements robbery does not: the property must be a motor vehicle, and the vehicle must be in another person’s actual possession. Conversely, robbery requires asportation—the carrying away of property—which the carjacking statute does not require. A defendant can therefore commit robbery without carjacking, and can commit carjacking without robbery.

Unauthorized use likewise requires taking and carrying away the vehicle, meaning that even slight actual movement is necessary. Carjacking requires no asportation, but does require force, violence, intimidation, or threats directed at a person in actual possession. Because each offense has elements the other lacks, carjacking cannot be reduced to unauthorized use plus an assault, and its mens rea is governed by its own statutory terms.

Dissents

Chief Justice Bell

Reasoning

Chief Justice Bell dissented, arguing that chief Judge Bell concluded that carjacking should be treated as a specific-intent offense requiring at least an intent to deprive the owner temporarily of the vehicle. In his view, carjacking is fundamentally a particular, aggravated form of robbery in which the property taken is an automobile. The legislative history showed that the General Assembly chiefly intended to impose more serious punishment for a violent form of conduct already punishable under existing offenses, not to eliminate an intent requirement altogether.

Section 348A(e), which provides that lack of intent permanently to deprive is not a defense, did not eliminate all intent to deprive in the dissent’s view. Rather, the word “permanently” has independent significance: it removes only the permanent-deprivation requirement while preserving a requirement that the defendant intended at least a temporary deprivation. Reading the statute to require no intent to deprive at all would make “permanently” surplusage.

At minimum, Chief Judge Bell regarded the statute as ambiguous on this point. Because carjacking carried a substantially greater maximum sentence than theft, robbery, armed robbery, or unauthorized use, the rule of lenity required resolving the ambiguity in Harris’s favor rather than adopting an interpretation that imposed a harsher punishment while requiring less proof of culpable intent.

The dissent also found the majority’s comparisons to federal, Michigan, and District of Columbia carjacking decisions unpersuasive. Federal courts had treated the original federal carjacking law as general intent because federal robbery was itself a general-intent offense; Maryland robbery, by contrast, requires specific intent. Michigan’s legislative history expressly revealed an aim to lower the prosecution’s burden, whereas Maryland’s history emphasized enhanced penalties. And the District of Columbia statute expressly used the terms “knowingly or recklessly,” unlike Maryland’s statute.

Finally, the dissent viewed it as anomalous and unfair to require specific intent for less serious offenses such as unauthorized use, theft, and robbery while allowing conviction for carjacking—punishable by up to thirty years—on only general intent. Because the State could prove an intent to deprive through circumstantial evidence, requiring that element would not prevent prosecution of genuine carjackers; it would instead preserve the mens rea appropriate to such a serious offense.