State v. Sowell

WILNER, Judge,

concurring:

Along with Judge Raker, I concur in the result reached by the majority. As is she, I am persuaded that the remaining distinction in the Maryland common law between principals and accessories is an anachronism that serves no useful purpose and ought to be abolished. It is a common law rule that is fully within our power to change. Judge Cathell’s research discloses, however, that, notwithstanding its common law status, in all of the other States where the rule has been changed, the change has been made by the State Legislature, and that does give me some pause. That the distinction has not been abolished by the Maryland General Assembly may well be explained, as Judge Lowe, a former Speaker of the House of Delegates, noted in Williamson v. State, 36 Md.App. 405, 414, 374 A.2d 909, 914 (1977) (Lowe, J., dissenting), not by any policy opposition to a change, but simply by the fact that the Legislature simply is “too occupied with matters of state to clean up the jurisprudential cobwebs we have accumulated.” Id. I am not aware that the General Assembly, in recent times, has been asked to make the change.

I would urge the Article 27 Committee, created by the General Assembly for the purpose of making appropriate recommendations for substantive changes to the Criminal Code, to consider this matter and to make a recommendation to the next (2000) session of the Legislature, so that it will have the matter squarely before it. We can then see if it feels as we do—that this distinction ought to be repealed—and we can be guided accordingly.