Justia Criminal Law Opinion Summaries

Defendant pleaded guilty to a third degree sexual offense. Defendant was sentenced to one year incarceration and was required to register as a sex offender. Six years later, Defendant petitioned for a writ of actual innocence, alleging newly discovered evidence. The circuit court denied the petition on the merits. The intermediate appellate court affirmed, holding that a writ of actual innocence does not apply to a guilty plea. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that a person who has pled guilty may not later avail himself or herself of the relief afforded by a petition for a writ of actual innocence. View "Yonga v. State" on Justia Law

American Sedan Services, Inc. is a commercial transportation service that has a permit from Maryland Aviation Administration (MAA) to provide ground transportation services at the Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI). Vadim Roshchin, who was employed as a driver by American Sedan, was picking up passengers at BWI without displaying the permit as required by an MAA regulation when Maryland Transportation Authority (MdTA) police arrested him and impounded the American Sedan. Roshchin and American Sedan sued MAA, MdTA, the MdTA police, and the State, alleging, among other claims, false arrest and false imprisonment. The circuit court granted summary judgment for the State on all counts. The Court of Special Appeals reversed, concluding that there was no legal justification for the arrest of Roshchin. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding (1) the regulation requiring commercial transportation services to display permits was not required to be posted at the airport as a prerequisite to its enforcement; and (2) there was legal justification for the arrest, as nothing in the MAA regulation or the Transportation Article deprives a police officer of the general authority to arrest an individual who commits a misdemeanor in the presence of the officer. View "State v. Roshchin" on Justia Law

Mother took her child to health providers on several occasions after complained that her father had hurt her. The child also exhibited vaginal redness. The Department of Human Resources notified Mother that it found her responsible for indicated child abuse mental injury. An Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) affirmed the Department’s finding of indicated child abuse mental injury and found that Mother could be placed on the central registry maintained by the Department. The circuit court affirmed the ALJ’s decision. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed, concluding, in relevant part, that the ALJ did not err by failing to include scienter as an element of indicated child abuse mental injury. The Court of Appeals reversed and remanded, holding that a parent can only be identified on a central registry as responsible for child abuse if the parent intended to injure the child or acted with reckless disregard of the child’s welfare. View "McClanahan v. Washington County Dep’t of Soc. Servs." on Justia Law

Defendants Matthew Meyer and Helen Rivera were placed on probationary terms and, as a special condition of probation, prohibited from operating a motor vehicle. The circuit court denied Meyer’s motion to correct and illegal sentence, concluding that Meyer’s sentence was not illegal. In Rivera’s case, the court of special appeals held that Rivera’s no-driving condition of probation violated the separation of powers doctrine. The State filed a petition for writ of certiorari with the Court of Appeals in both cases. The Court consolidated the cases to address the common questions of law and fact and held (1) Sheppard v. State, which prohibits a court from restricting a defendant’s driving privileges as a condition of probation under certain circumstances, was wrongly decided and is thus overruled; and (2) in Meyer, the circuit court properly denied the defendant’s motion to correct an illegal sentence, and in Rivera, the court of appeals’ judgment holding that the no-driving condition of probation violated the separation of powers doctrine is reversed. View "Meyer v. State" on Justia Law

Petitioner was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed. Two issues were presented in this appeal, first, whether Petitioner’s statement, “I don’t want to say nothing. I don’t know” was an ambiguous or clear invocation of his right to remain silent under Miranda, and second, whether Petitioner’s confession, given after he waived his Miranda rights, was voluntary or the product of inducement. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding (1) Petitioner’s statement, “I don’t want to say nothing. I don’t know” was an ambiguous invocation of his right to remain silent; and (2) Petitioner’s confession was voluntary. View "Williams v. State" on Justia Law

Petitioner was charged with theft of property with a value of at least $500 and embezzlement. The charges arose from Petitioner’s removal of funds from a multiple-party bank account, to which Petitioner and her father were parties, to use for her own benefit without her father’s permission. After a bench trial, the circuit court found Petitioner guilty. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding (1) the evidence was sufficient to support a conviction for theft, as an individual can commit theft from a joint or multiple-party bank account to which the individual is a party under certain circumstances; and (2) the evidence was sufficient to support a conviction for embezzlement. View "Wagner v. State" on Justia Law

In 1999, Petitioner was charged with, among other crimes, three counts of first degree assault. In 2000, the circuit court determined that Petitioner was incompetent and ordered that he be committed. In 2004, Petitioner was found competent to stand trial. Petitioner pled not guilty to the charges of second degree assault. Petitioner was found guilty. The circuit court determined vacated Petitioner’s sentence and ordered a new trial, concluding that Petitioner’s counsel provided ineffective assistance because he had not advised Petitioner of the immigration consequences of his assault conviction. After a retrial, the jury found Petitioner guilty of two counts of first-degree assault and two counts of second-degree assault, among related crimes. Petitioner was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. Petitioner appealed, arguing that the trial court erred in failing to determine, prior to trial, that he was competent to stand trial and erred in finding at sentencing that he was competent to stand trial. The court of special appeals affirmed. The Court of Appeals reversed, holding that, pursuant to Md. Code Ann. Crim. Proc.. 3-104, the trial court was required to make a determination upon retrial whether Petitioner was competent to stand trial and therefore clearly erred in determining at sentencing that Petitioner was competent. View "Sibug v. State" on Justia Law

In 1996, Appellant was convicted of two counts of first degree murder and related offenses. In 2008, Appellant filed a petition for post-conviction DNA testing pursuant to Md. Code Ann. Crim. Proc. (CP) 8-201, alleging that socks he had allegedly worn at the time of the murders that the State introduced into evidence at trial lacked his DNA. The State responded with documentation that the socks were destroyed along with other items seized in the case after Appellant’s conviction had been affirmed on direct appeal. In 2011, the circuit court closed the case. In 2013, Appellant sought to reopen the proceedings pursuant to CP 8-201, alleging that the State had improperly destroyed the socks. The pro bono counsel that had assisted Appellant in the earlier proceedings under CP 8-201 moved to strike their appearance. The circuit court granted counsels’ motion, denied Appellant’s request for new court-appointed counsel, and denied Appellant’s request to conduct further proceedings under CP 8-201. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the circuit court did not abuse its discretion when it (1) granted the motion of Appellant’s pro bono counsel to strike their appearance; (2) declined to appoint new counsel for Appellant; and (3) declined to order relief under CP 8-201. View "Simms v. State" on Justia Law

Two years after she was raped, the victim reported her suspicion that Petitioner was the rapist. Petitioner went to the police station for an interview but refused to provide a DNA sample. After Petitioner left the station, the police took swabs of the armrests of the chair in which he had sat and submitted those swabs for DNA analysis. That DNA sample matched DNA collected from the victim’s home on the day of the rape. Petitioner was charged with first-degree rape and related offenses. Petitioner filed a pre-trial motion seeking suppression of the DNA evidence. The suppression court denied the motion, concluding that Petitioner had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the DNA evidence left on the chair. The court of special appeals affirmed the denial of the suppression motion. Petitioner filed a petition for a writ of certiorari but conceded that the police lawfully obtained his genetic material from the armrests of the chair. The issue before the Court of appeals was whether law enforcement’s testing of the identifying loci within that DNA material was a search for purposes of the Fourth Amendment. The Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that the DNA testing at issue was not a search under the Fourth Amendment. View "Raynor v. State" on Justia Law

In 1995, Petitioner was convicted of first-degree murder and the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. In 2006, the Supreme Court determined in Clemons v. State that, under the Frye-Reed standard, Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis (CBLA) evidence was not generally accepted by the scientific community. Within a few years of his conviction, Petitioner sought post-conviction relief, arguing that the admission of “unreliable” CBLA evidence during his trial in the form of testimony from Agent Ernest Peele of the Federal Bureau of Investigation constituted a due process violation and that his attorneys provided ineffective assistance for failing adequately to cross-examine Agent Peele. The circuit judge denied relief, and the court of special appeals affirmed. The Court of Appeals reversed Petitioner’s conviction and remanded for a new trial, holding that Petitioner’s attorneys rendered ineffective assistance when they failed to investigate a report Peele co-authored in 1991 that presaged the flaws in CBLA evidence and to challenge the State’s scientific evidence on cross-examination at trial. View "Kulbicki v. State" on Justia Law