## Facts

- A fire occurred on February 5, 1987, in a two-story, 10-unit apartment building in Temple Hills, Maryland.
- The fire originated in one apartment and spread, substantially damaging three separate apartments occupied by three different tenants.
- Guy Lancaster Richmond, after a work-related dispute and suspension, arranged for associates to set fire to one tenant’s apartment as retaliation.
- The State charged Richmond with three counts of procuring the burning of a dwelling house, one count per damaged apartment, under Maryland’s arson statute (then Md. Code art. 27, § 6).
- A trial court convicted Richmond on all three counts and imposed three consecutive 15-year sentences.
- On appeal, Richmond challenged the multiple convictions and consecutive sentences as impermissible multiple punishment for a single fire.

## Issues

1. Whether Maryland’s arson statute treats each separately occupied apartment unit within one building as a separate “dwelling house” for purposes of the unit of prosecution.
2. Whether imposing three arson convictions and consecutive sentences for one fire that damaged three apartments violates the Double Jeopardy Clause’s protection against multiple punishments for the same offense.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals of Maryland affirmed the three convictions and consecutive sentences.
- The court held that each separately occupied apartment constituted a separate “dwelling house” under the arson statute.
- Because the legislature intended each dwelling house to be a discrete unit of prosecution, multiple convictions and consecutive sentences for damage to multiple apartments from a single fire were permissible.
- The court rejected the double jeopardy challenge because the punishments corresponded to separate statutory offenses (one per dwelling unit), not multiple punishments for the same offense.

## Legal Principles

- In multiple-punishment claims under a single statute, the controlling question is legislative intent as to the “unit of prosecution”; the Double Jeopardy Clause is not violated when the legislature authorizes separate punishments.
- Maryland’s arson statute, rooted in the common-law definition of arson, protects the security of habitation; thus, distinct units of habitation may be treated as distinct dwellings.
- The statutory reference to burning “any dwelling house” supports treating each dwelling as a separate prosecutable unit.
- “Wilful and malicious” burning is satisfied when a defendant intentionally sets a fire with reckless disregard of the likely consequences, including spread to other dwellings.

## Conclusion

The court held that separately occupied apartments within a multi-unit building are separate “dwelling houses” under Maryland’s arson statute, so a single fire that damages multiple apartments can support multiple arson convictions and consecutive sentences without violating the Double Jeopardy Clause.


Richmond v. State, 326 Md. 257 (Md. 1992)