State v. Ward
Court of Appeals of Maryland
396 A.2d 1041 (1978)
James Edward Ward was indicted as an accessory before the fact to the premeditated murder of Gerald Joseph Godbout, Jr., committed on April 28, 1972, by Harry Edward Brockman and David Victor Maness, who had already been tried separately in the Circuit Court for Prince George's County. Ward moved to dismiss his indictment, arguing it was defective because, under the common law doctrine of accessoryship, an accessory before the fact could not be convicted of a higher degree of murder than his principal, and because Maryland's statutory division of murder into degrees was unknown to the English common law from which the accessoryship doctrine originated.
Whether the common law properly distinguishes among criminal accomplices — principals in the first degree, principals in the second degree, accessories before the fact, and accessories after the fact — based on the accomplice's presence at the crime and the timing of the assistance provided.