HARRELL, J.
In 2007, Respondent, Larry Edward Johnson, filed in the Circuit Court for Wicomico County an application to obtain review by a three-judge panel of his mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years' incarceration, without the possibility of parole, resulting from his 1992 conviction by that court for daytime housebreaking. After reviewing Johnson's application, the sentence review panel determined, by order entered on 16 January 2008, that his sentence should remain unchanged. Johnson's application for leave to appeal the judgment of the panel was granted by the Court of Special Appeals. Johnson's appeal was premised on the grounds that the panel denied him his right to counsel during the sentence review proceedings and failed to comply with the Maryland Rules governing waiver of counsel. The intermediate appellate court agreed with Johnson, vacated the review panel's order, and
FACTS
On 6 August 1992, Johnson pled guilty, in the Circuit Court for Wicomico County, to daytime housebreaking and was sentenced as a subsequent offender
Following two unsuccessful petitions for post-conviction relief, filed in the Circuit Court on 10 December 1992 and 25 September 2000, respectively, Johnson filed in proper person in the Circuit Court, on 28 October 2005, an application for review of his sentence by a three-judge panel. As authority for his right to file this application, Johnson relied on expressly the General Assembly's passage of House Bill 596 of the 2005 legislative session, where the Legislature amended § 8-102 of the Criminal Procedure Article to permit "a person who is serving a term of confinement for burglary or daytime housebreaking that includes a mandatory minimum sentence
On 10 December 2007, Johnson filed, again in proper person, in the Circuit Court a second application for sentence review by a three-judge panel (the application at issue in the present case), this time relying expressly on the General Assembly's passage of House Bill 1317 in the 2007 legislative session, which again amended § 8-102 to permit "a person who is serving a mandatory minimum sentence of confinement imposed under former Article 27, § 643B of the Code before October 1, 1994, where burglary or daytime housebreaking was a predicate offense for the imposition of the mandatory minimum sentence, [to] apply for and receive one review of the mandatory minimum sentence...." See 2007 Md. Laws 4058-60. This enactment, like its 2005 predecessor, granted the review panel only the ability to strike the restriction against parole (not to reduce the length of the sentence) and required that all such applications for review be filed on or before 30 September 2008. Id. at 4060.
On 13 December 2007, the administrative judge of the Circuit Court wrote Johnson advising him that a sentence review panel was designated and stating that Johnson had fifteen days to submit in writing "any information ... independent of that contained in" the application for sentence review that Johnson wished for the panel to consider. The same letter was sent to the State's Attorney for Wicomico County and the local Office of the Public Defender. On 20 December 2007, 10 days after filing his second application and 20 days before the review panel was to reach a decision, Johnson wrote to the panel and the Public Defender, stating:
No other information was presented to the review panel for its consideration.
On 16 January 2008, the sentence review panel, after considering Johnson's application and without holding a hearing,
Johnson filed timely, on 7 February 2008, an application for leave to appeal to the Court of Special Appeals from the second sentence review panel's order. Bulwarked now by the appearance of assigned counsel from the State Public Defender's Appeals Division, Johnson argued
On 9 December 2009, we granted the State's petition for a writ of certiorari, 411 Md. 599, 984 A.2d 243 (2009), to consider potentially the following issues, as framed by the State in its petition:
Although not contained in its petition for writ of certiorari, the State advanced, in its brief and during oral argument, an additional contention, namely, that the judgment of the Court of Special Appeals must be reversed on the ground that the Circuit Court was without jurisdiction to consider Johnson's 2007 application for sentence review because Johnson applied for in 2005 and received review in 2006 of his sentence under House Bill 596 of the 2005 legislative session.
PERTINENT PRINCIPLES OF SOUND STATUTORY INTERPRETATION
In Lockshin v. Semsker, 412 Md. 257, 987 A.2d 18 (2010), we recounted the oft-repeated principles of sound statutory interpretation, observing:
Id. at 274-77, 987 A.2d at 28-29 (internal citations omitted). With these principles arrayed before us, we approach the statutory basis underlying Johnson's alleged right to obtain a review of his sentence by the three-judge panel in 2007-08, the resolution of which we find to be dispositive of this case.
ANALYSIS
At the time the Circuit Court sentenced Johnson to a mandatory minimum 25-year term of incarceration in 1992, a defendant's right in a criminal case to obtain a review of his or her sentence by a three-judge panel of trial judges was governed
Md.Code, Former Art. 27, § 645JA (emphasis added). Because Johnson's sentence was a mandatory minimum sentence, he was not entitled to seek review by a three-judge panel under § 645JA.
In 1994, the General Assembly enacted Senate Bill 322, which amended Former Article 27, § 643B, to remove daytime housebreaking from the list of "crimes of violence" subject to mandatory minimum penalties. See 1994 Md. Laws 3158-59. Nevertheless, the amendment did not apply retrospectively; therefore, because Johnson's sentence was considered still a mandatory minimum sentence, he remained barred from filing for sentence review under § 645JA, even though, had he been convicted of the identical crime after the effective date of the 1994 amendment, he would have been entitled to sentence review.
In addition to the amendment to § 643B removing daytime housebreaking from the list of "crimes of violence" subject to mandatory minimum penalties, in 1999, the General Assembly amended § 645JA to remove those individuals serving a mandatory minimum sentence from the list of persons who could not seek a review of their sentence by a three-judge panel. See 1999 Md. Laws 3567-68. Again, however, this amendment did not include a provision which would have permitted persons serving a mandatory minimum sentence imposed prior to the 1999 amendment (such as Johnson) to seek a sentence review by a three-judge panel under § 645JA. The Court of Special Appeals, in Cox v. State, 134 Md.App. 465, 760 A.2d 290 (2000), noted this state of affairs, holding that the defendant, who was serving a mandatory sentence for daytime housebreaking, could not seek review of his sentence under § 645JA because he had been sentenced prior to the effective date of the statute allowing review of mandatory sentences, which contained no statement of retrospective application. Id. at 469-71, 760 A.2d at 292-94.
In 2001, § 645JA was recodified as Maryland Code, Criminal Procedure Article § 8-102. That section, entitled "Right to sentence review," provides, in pertinent part:
Md.Code (2001, 2008 Repl. Vol.), Crim.
Finally, in 2005, the General Assembly enacted House Bill 596, which reenacted § 8-102 without change, providing for individuals such as Johnson to obtain sentence review. Specifically, House Bill 596, entitled "AN ACT concerning Burglary and Daytime Housebreaking—Mandatory Sentences—Retroactive Effect," provided in pertinent part:
2005 Md. Laws 1800-01. Thus, under House Bill 596, Johnson, and other individuals similarly situated, were granted the right to a one-time review of their sentence by a three-judge panel, a right which, until 2005, had been denied to them as the result of the lack of retrospective application of the amendments to §§ 643B and 645JA. As noted supra, Johnson took advantage of this provision by filing his 2005 application for sentence review, upon consideration of which the three-judge review panel declined in 2006 to alter his sentence.
In 2007, the General Assembly enacted House Bill 1317, which again reenacted § 8-102, without change, and granted certain incarcerated individuals the right to obtain sentence review. Specifically, House Bill 1317, entitled "AN ACT concerning Mandatory Minimum Sentences— Burglary and Daytime Housebreaking— Retroactive Effect," provided in pertinent part:
2007 Md. Laws 4058-60. Johnson filed his 2007 application for sentence review, his second such application, under this provision. The State contends that Johnson was not entitled to file this second application for sentence review, arguing that House Bill 1317 sought merely to expand the group of individuals granted the right to obtain a single sentence review, rather than providing individuals who already received
Section 8-102(a) of the Criminal Procedure Article, the provision governing specifically the right to sentence review, is clear on its face. It provides that "a person convicted of a crime by a circuit court and sentenced to serve a sentence that exceeds 2 years in a correctional facility is entitled to a single sentence review by a review panel." Md.Code, Crim. Proc. § 8-102(a) (emphasis added). Similarly, the pertinent text of House Bill 596 and House Bill 1317 each state that the incarcerated individual "may apply for and receive one review of the mandatory minimum sentence." (Emphasis added). It is obvious that the purpose of both bills was to provide an enlarging group of certain individuals the opportunity to seek a single review of their sentence, an opportunity which, perhaps unfairly, did not exist for them prior to 2005. Neither bill expanded the one-review limitation contained in § 8-102(a). Thus, the plain language of § 8-102(a), and House Bills 596 and 1317, suggests that the review panel in the present case was without jurisdiction to consider Johnson's 2007 application, as he had received review already of his sentence in 2005-06 under House Bill 596.
The legislative history of House Bill 1317, the provision under which Johnson filed the present application, supports clearly this conclusion. See Lockshin, 412 Md. at 279, 987 A.2d at 31 ("For the sake of completeness, `we may resort to legislative history to ensure that our plain language interpretation is correct.'" (quoting Bd. of Educ. v. Zimmer-Rubert, 409 Md. 200, 214, 973 A.2d 233, 241 (2009))); Shenker v. Laureate Educ., Inc., 411 Md. 317, 349, 983 A.2d 408, 426 (2009) (reviewing legislative history "[f]or the sake of testing the validity of our construction" in the context of statutory interpretation). For example, the Revised Fiscal and Policy Note accompanying House Bill 1317, prepared by staff of the General Assembly, provides the following summary of the legislation:
Revised Fiscal and Policy Note, H.B. 1317 (2007) (emphasis added). The "Current Law" section of the Note observes similarly that, "[u]nder § 8-102 of the Criminal Procedure Article, a person convicted of a crime by a circuit court and sentenced to serve a sentence that exceeds two years in a correctional facility is entitled to a single review by a review panel." Id. (emphasis added). In addition, the Note describes the rationale underlying passage of House Bill 1317, namely, to permit a single sentence review for those individuals excluded from sentence review under House Bill 596 solely because daytime housebreaking was their first or second offense, rather than their "third strike," and the limited nature of the grant of review, stating:
Id. (emphasis added). Thus, it is clear that the intent of House Bill 1317 was to remedy the inequity caused by the distinction inadvertently drawn between prisoners whose first or second "strikes" were burglary or daytime housebreaking (who were without the right to sentence review under House Bill 596) and those for whom such crimes constituted their third "strike" (to whom House Bill 596 granted the right to a single sentence review).
Bolstering our conclusion that individuals who obtained sentence review pursuant to House Bill 596 are not entitled to an additional sentence review under House Bill 1317 are materials from the legislative history of House Bill 596. For example, the Revised Fiscal Policy Note accompanying House Bill 596 states that the bill "allows a person serving a term of confinement for burglary or daytime housebreaking that includes a mandatory minimum sentence imposed before October 1, 1994
It is clear in the extreme from the legislative history of House Bill 596 that the General Assembly intended that individuals granted the right to sentence review under the legislation's provisions would have but one opportunity to seek review of their sentence by a three-judge panel.
We hold that incarcerated individuals who were granted the right to obtain, and in fact did obtain, review of their mandatory minimum sentence by a three-judge panel under House Bill 596 of the 2005 legislative session are barred from receiving additional review of their sentence under House Bill 1317. As noted supra, Johnson sought and received review of his mandatory minimum sentence in 2005-06, pursuant to the provisions of House Bill 596. Therefore, Johnson was not entitled to an additional sentence review in 2007-08 pursuant to House Bill 1317, and the three-judge sentence review panel in the present case was without jurisdiction to consider his 2007 application.
FootNotes
Md.Code, Former Art. 27, § 643B.
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