Nichols v. State

The Court of Appeals vacated all of Petitioner’s sentences and remanded the case for resentencing, holding that, under the circumstances of this case, it was appropriate for the Court to exercise its discretion to vacate all of Petitioner’s sentences.Specifically, the Court held (1) the law of the case doctrine does not bar a trial court from considering under Maryland Rule 4-345(a) an issue as to a sentence’s legality that an appellate court has not resolved, and the Court of Special Appeals erred in concluding that the law of the case doctrine barred the circuit court from considering Defendant’s second challenge to his sentence for conspiracy to commit false imprisonment because the Court of Special Appeals did not resolve that challenge in the first appeal in this case; (2) under CR 1-202, where a defendant is convicted of both a crime and conspiracy to commit that crime, a trial court cannot impose for the conspiracy a sentence that exceeds the maximum sentence that the trial court imposed for the crime that the person conspired to commit; and (3) under CR 12-702(b), an aggregate sentence of a certain number of years of imprisonment is more severe than a sentence of life imprisonment, with all but a lower number of years suspended. View "Nichols v. State" on Justia Law