## Facts

- Williams argued with Jones over a photograph; Jones took Williams’s wallet and fled.
- Williams went inside, called police, then returned outside; Jones approached and swung a lead pipe at him.
- Williams retreated into his house, obtained a bow and arrow, and pursued Jones.
- As Williams prepared to shoot at Jones, bystander Jewel Lyles walked nearby; Williams warned her to “watch out.”
- The arrow missed Jones and struck Lyles; she later died from the wound.
- Lyles was about nine months pregnant; the fetus was delivered alive before Lyles’s death but died shortly thereafter from injuries causally tied to the mother’s wound.
- A jury convicted Williams of manslaughter for the deaths of both Lyles and the infant.

## Issues

1. Whether Maryland common law treats as homicide the death of a child who was injured in utero, born alive, and later dies from the prenatal injury.
2. Whether that common-law rule supports affirming Williams’s manslaughter conviction for the infant’s death.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals of Maryland held that, under Maryland common law, a child injured in utero who is born alive and later dies from that injury is a homicide victim.
- The court adopted the “born-alive rule” as part of Maryland’s received English common law of crimes.
- The court sustained Williams’s manslaughter conviction for the infant’s death because the child was born alive and died from the prenatal injury.

## Legal Principles

- Under Maryland common law, when (1) a fetus is injured in utero, (2) the child is subsequently born alive, and (3) the child dies from that injury after birth, the death constitutes a prosecutable criminal homicide.
- For common-law homicide purposes, live birth satisfies the requirement that the victim be a “person” or “human being,” even if the lethal injury was inflicted before birth.
- In determining Maryland’s received common law, the court may choose between competing historical English authorities and apply the rule it finds better reflects the common law incorporated into Maryland law, absent statutory change.

## Conclusion

Maryland recognized that an infant who is injured before birth, is born alive, and then dies from those injuries is a homicide victim under common law, and the court therefore upheld Williams’s manslaughter conviction for the infant’s death.


Williams v. State, 561 A.2d 216 (Md. 1989)