Thomas v. State

1

STEVEN ANTHONY THOMAS v. STATE OF MARYLAND

No. 657-2021

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland^[*]

May 8, 2023

Circuit Court for Charles County Case No. 08-K-02-000568

Kehoe Beachley, Zic, JJ.

OPINION ^[**]

Kehoe J Steven Anthony Thomas appeals from an order of the Circuit Court for Charles County that denied his motion for a modification of sentence. He presents one question, which we have slightly reworded:

Did the circuit court err in denying his motion for modification of sentence on the grounds that it did not have authority to modify his sentence?

For the reasons that we will explain, we will reverse the judgment of the circuit court and remand this case for further proceedings.

BACKGROUND

In 1994, Mr. Thomas pled guilty to two counts of robbery with a deadly weapon and one count of second-degree burglary. On December 3, 2014, he withdrew an existing petition for post-conviction relief in exchange for a reduction in sentence. On the same day, he was sentenced to a total term of thirty-two years and six months to be served consecutively to any sentence he was serving at the time of his first sentencing. On February 9, 2015, Mr. Thomas timely filed a motion for modification of this sentence and requested a hearing on his motion.^[1] On June 5, 2015, the court issued an order holding the motion in abeyance.

On September 7, 2017, Appellant's counsel filed a supplemental motion for modification of sentence and request for hearing. On September 29, 2017, the motion was stamped "NOTE. NO ACTION 9/29/2017,"^[2] together with the initials "WRG."^[3] About a year later, on September 21, 2018, Mr. Thomas filed another supplemental motion for modification of sentence and again requested a hearing. On October 18, 2018, the motion was stamped "NOTE. NO ACTION."

In August of 2019, Mr. Thomas again filed yet another supplemental motion for modification of sentence and requested a hearing. In this motion, Mr. Thomas stated:

Md. Rule 4-345(e) requires that any revision or modification of sentence take place within 5 years from the date the defendant is sentence[d]. This 5-year period will expire on December 2, 2019[.] Mr. Thomas, wherefore, is respectfully requesting that a hearing be scheduled on or before December 2, 2019.

On December 6, 2019, the motion was stamped "NOTE. NO ACTION."

On January 8, 2021, Mr. Thomas filed another supplemental motion for modification of sentence together with a request for a hearing. The circuit court scheduled a hearing on the motion for June 16, 2021. At the conclusion of the hearing, the court denied Mr. Thomas's motion and explained:

All right, I'm looking at [Rule 4-345] now, looking at the motions in this case. And I think in this case Mr. Thomas, that I'm going to have [to] deny the motion based upon the fact that the rule states that the court may not revise the sentence after the expiration of five years. [T]he motion for reconsideration is denied in this case on the grounds that the court does not have authority to modify . . . the sentence on this date.

Mr. Thomas filed a timely notice of appeal.^[4]

THE PARTIES' CONTENTIONS

Mr. Thomas sets out a multi-step argument in support of his position that the circuit court erred in denying his motion to modify his sentence:

First, he asserts that "as a matter of general principle, a trial court encountering a matter that falls within the realm of judicial discretion must exercise that discretion in ruling on the matter, and that a court's failure to do so is itself an abuse of discretion." He cites State v. Wilkins, 393 Md. 269, 278 (2006); Gray v. State, 368 Md. 529, 565 (2002); and Gunning v. State, 347 Md. 332, 351 (1997) in support of this proposition.

Second, the expiration of the five-year time limit for granting motions for modification of sentence contained in Rule 4-345(e) "does not divest courts of their fundamental jurisdiction[.]" In support, he directs our attention primarily to the Supreme Court of Maryland's^[5] analysis in Rosales v. State, 463 Md. 552, 568 (2019). In Rosales, the Supreme Court of Maryland distinguished between the statute that provides for appeals from judgments of the circuit courts^[6] and Md. Rule 8-202(a), which states that "[e]xcept as otherwise provided in this Rule or by law, the notice of appeal shall be filed within 30 days after entry of the judgment or order from which the appeal is taken." The Court concluded that "Maryland Rule 8-202(a) is a claim-processing rule, and not a jurisdictional limitation on this Court." 463 Md. at 568.

Third, there is no statutory limitation on a court's authority to grant a Rule 4-345(e)(1) motion; instead, the five-year limit is imposed by the rule itself. Thus, reasons Mr. Thomas, the rule is a "claims processing" regulation and therefore the trial court retained what he terms "fundamental jurisdiction" to address the merits of his motion even after the five-year deadline expired. Mr. Thomas directs us to Schlick v. State, 238 Md.App. 681, 690 (2018) ("Schlick I"), aff'd on other grounds in State v. Schlick, 465 Md. 566 (2019) ("Schlick II"). (We will discuss the Schlick decisions later in this opinion.) For these reasons, he states that the motions court erred when it "refus[ed] to recognize that it possessed fundamental jurisdiction to rule on the merits of the motion for modification outside the five-year limit[.]" Additionally, according to Mr. Thomas, "the court failed to exercise discretion within the five-year limit and thereby abused its discretion."

The State agrees with none of this. It contends that the plain language of Rule 4-345(e) means what it says. The State points to the text of the rule itself and asserts that it does not require a court to rule on a motion to modify a sentence; instead, the rule prohibits a court from modifying a sentence after the five-year deadline has expired. The State notes that, prior to the 2004 amendment to Rule 4-345, a court's authority to modify a sentence was not subject to any temporal limitation. The State asserts:

[The Supreme Court of Maryland's] intent in enacting the five-year limit is clear. The Court made a deliberate decision to end the prior regime, in which for over 40 years, trial courts had been able to exercise revisory power for an unlimited time after sentencing if a timely motion was filed.

In its place, the Court established an express five-year limit that applies to all criminal sentences without exception and cannot be waived.^[7]

It is the State's position that Schlick I was wrongly decided and should be overruled. Alternatively, the State suggests that Schlick I is factually distinguishable from the case before us. The State urges us to restrict the scope of Schlick I's holding to cases which are factually indistinguishable from it.

For reasons that we will explain, we conclude that Schlick I constitutes binding precedent in this appeal. Based on our reasoning in Schlick I, we hold that the trial court retained the authority to rule on Mr. Thomas's Rule 4-345(e) motion even after the five-year deadline had expired.

THE STANDARD OF REVIEW

Md Rule 4-345 governs the revisory power of courts over requests to modify sentences. It states in pertinent part (emphasis added): (e)(1) Modification Upon Motion. Generally. Upon a motion filed within

90 days after imposition of a sentence (A) in the District Court, if an appeal has not been perfected or has been dismissed, and (B) in a circuit court, whether or not an appeal has been filed, the court has revisory power over the sentence except that it may not revise the sentence after the expiration of five years from the date the sentence originally was imposed on the defendant and it may not increase the sentence.

(f) Open Court Hearing. The court may modify, reduce, correct, or vacate a sentence only on the record in open court, after hearing from the defendant, the State, and from each victim or victim's representative who requests an opportunity to be heard.... If the court grants the motion, the court ordinarily shall prepare and file or dictate into the record a statement setting forth the reasons on which the ruling is based.

Whether to grant a motion to modify a sentence is a matter of the trial court's discretion. A court abuses its discretion when its ruling is premised upon a legal error. See Brown, Bottini, and Wilson v. State, 470 Md. 503, 554 (2020) (An "abuse of discretion . . . may include a legal error, such as the circuit court failing to recognize or exercise its discretion.") Greco v. State, 347 Md. 423, 437 (1997) (holding that "the trial court erred as a matter of law by ruling that it did not have jurisdiction to consider the motion [to modify a sentence] on the merits.").

ANALYSIS

At the core of Mr. Thomas's appellate contentions is the premise that, because his Rule 4-345(e) motion was filed within 90 days of the imposition of his sentence, the circuit court retained "fundamental jurisdiction" to address the merits of the motion even after the five-year limit provided in Maryland Rule 4-345(e) had lapsed. We agree. For the following reasons, it is our view that Schlick I requires this result.

Schlick I

In 2005, Schlick was convicted of distributing crack cocaine and sentenced to a term of incarceration for 16 years with all but 18 months suspended. He was also placed on probation for five years. 238 Md.App. at 684. In 2008, the probation was revoked and the court imposed the suspended sentence. Schlick asked his trial counsel to file a Rule 4-345(e) motion to modify his sentence, but counsel failed to do so. In 2012, Schlick filed a petition for post-conviction relief, asserting that he had asked his trial counsel to file a Rule 4-345(e) motion. The post-conviction court granted...