## Facts

- Timothy Harris, Jack Tipton, and others spent an evening playing cards and consuming alcohol at a friend’s house.
- Near the end of the night, Tipton offered to drive Harris home in Tipton’s car.
- During the drive, Harris became angry when Tipton refused to drive to the District of Columbia.
- According to Tipton, Harris forcibly removed him from the vehicle and drove away with the car.
- Tipton reported the vehicle as stolen.
- Harris was charged in the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County with carjacking, unlawful taking of a motor vehicle, and second-degree assault.
- At trial, Harris claimed he had been drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana and argued that he was too intoxicated to form the mental state required for the charged offenses.
- Harris requested a jury instruction on voluntary intoxication, contending that carjacking (like certain theft-type offenses) required specific intent.
- The trial court denied the requested instruction as to carjacking and instructed the jury that unlawful taking of a motor vehicle was the only charged offense requiring specific intent.
- The jury acquitted Harris of unlawful taking of a motor vehicle but convicted him of carjacking and second-degree assault.
- Harris appealed; the Court of Appeals of Maryland granted certiorari to decide whether carjacking is a specific-intent offense.

## Issues

1. Whether Maryland’s carjacking statute (former Md. Code art. 27, § 348A) requires proof of specific intent, such that the defendant was entitled to a voluntary-intoxication instruction on the carjacking charge.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals of Maryland held that carjacking under § 348A is not a specific-intent crime.
- Because voluntary intoxication in Maryland is a defense only to specific-intent offenses, Harris was not entitled to a voluntary-intoxication instruction for carjacking.
- The court affirmed Harris’s convictions for carjacking and assault.

## Legal Principles

- Voluntary intoxication may negate the mens rea for a specific-intent crime in Maryland, but it is not a defense to a general-intent crime.
- In determining whether a statute creates a specific-intent offense, courts look first to the statutory text; the absence of an express specific-intent requirement (such as “intent to permanently deprive”) supports classification as general intent.
- Legislative drafting choices matter: when the General Assembly intends to include a specific-intent element, it typically does so expressly in the statute’s language.
- Maryland’s carjacking statute focuses on the violent or intimidating taking of control of a motor vehicle from a person in possession; the State need not prove a further specific purpose (such as an intent to permanently deprive) to establish carjacking.
- A trial court does not err by refusing a voluntary-intoxication instruction when the charged offense does not require specific intent.

## Conclusion

In *Harris v. State*, the Court of Appeals of Maryland ruled that carjacking under former Article 27, § 348A is a general-intent offense defined by obtaining unauthorized possession or control of a vehicle from a person in possession through force, violence, or intimidation, without any added requirement of a specific purpose such as an intent to permanently deprive; therefore, Harris was not entitled to a voluntary-intoxication instruction on the carjacking count, and the judgment of conviction was affirmed.


Harris v. State, 728 A.2d 180 (1999)