Background
When a Maryland court finds a criminal defendant incompetent to stand trial and dangerous to self or others (“IST”), it must commit the defendant to a designated health care facility administered by the Maryland Department of Health for competency restoration treatment. Following a 2017 ruling in Powell v. Maryland Dep’t of Health that exposed chronic, years-long admission delays, the General Assembly amended Md. Code Ann., Crim. Proc. (“CP”) § 3-106 in 2018 to impose a firm 10-business-day deadline for the Department to admit IST defendants after receiving a court commitment order. The statute authorizes courts to “impose any sanction reasonably designed to compel compliance” if that deadline is missed, including reimbursement of detention facility costs.
Six respondents — Jeffrey Boulden, Glenn Hawkins, William Lomax, Kennard Goins, Malik Jackson, and Steven Kauffman — were each adjudicated IST in cases filed in Kent County and Baltimore County circuit courts. The Department failed to admit any of them within the statutory 10 days, citing a statewide waiting list of over 200 individuals competing for a fixed pool of roughly 1,056 beds, a post-COVID surge in commitment orders (rising from approximately 750 in 2019 to 1,100 in 2023), and clinical acuity protocols that required prioritizing the most severely ill patients. The circuit courts imposed daily monetary sanctions — $2,000 per day in Kent County and $1,000 per day in Baltimore County — for each day of noncompliance beyond the statutory deadline. Two respondents (Hawkins and Goins) had been admitted before their respective sanctions hearings; the other four had not yet been transferred when sanctions were imposed.
The Appellate Court of Maryland affirmed the decisions to sanction but remanded four cases for recalculation of the sanction amounts. The Department sought further review, arguing that none of the sanctions were “reasonably designed to compel compliance” given the structural impossibility of meeting the deadline, that authority to sanction evaporated once the Department eventually admitted a defendant, and that the statutory sanctions mechanism violated the separation of powers under Article 8 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights. The Supreme Court of Maryland granted certiorari and affirmed.
The Court’s Holding
Writing for the majority (Justice Biran, joined by Watts, Booth, Eaves, Killough, and Hotten, JJ.), the Court held that CP § 3-106(c)(4) authorizes courts to impose monetary sanctions each day the Department fails to manage its waiting list so as to admit the defendant before the court as soon as possible after the eleventh business day following receipt of the commitment order. The Court rejected the Department’s impossibility argument, explaining that the statute creates what is effectively a strict-liability violation upon missing the 10-day deadline and that the Department’s own testimony revealed it had meaningful discretion in how it managed the waiting list. Because waiting-list management was within the Department’s control, daily sanctions were reasonably designed to incentivize faster compliance — not proof of willful bad faith, but a coercive tool aimed at producing the speediest possible admission.
The Court further held that a court does not lose its authority to sanction the Department merely because the Department eventually admits a defendant before the sanctions hearing takes place. The two respondents (Hawkins and Goins) who were admitted shortly before the Baltimore County hearing were still subject to sanctions for the period of noncompliance, because the triggering condition — failure to admit within 10 business days — had already been established. Permitting the Department to escape liability by achieving belated compliance immediately before a hearing would undermine the statute’s coercive purpose.
On the constitutional question, the Court held that the General Assembly did not violate the separation of powers by vesting courts with discretionary sanction authority under CP § 3-106(c)(4). Imposing sanctions to enforce a statutory obligation is a quintessential judicial function expressly authorized by law, not an encroachment on executive power. Although the Department had waived its separation-of-powers argument by abandoning it on appeal after raising it below, the Court exercised its discretion under Maryland Rule 8-131(b) to decide the issue given the likelihood of recurrence. Justices Booth, Gould, and Killough dissented.
Key Takeaways
- Failure to admit an IST defendant within 10 business days triggers sanction authority under CP § 3-106(c)(4) regardless of whether the violation was willful; the standard operates like strict liability once the deadline passes.
- Daily monetary sanctions survive a belated admission — the Department cannot extinguish its exposure by transferring a defendant just before or just after a sanctions hearing.
- Courts may impose per-day sanctions not just for the Department’s overall capacity shortfall, but specifically for each day it fails to manage the waiting list to prioritize the defendant before the court as soon as possible after the eleventh business day.
- Granting courts discretion to sanction executive agencies for statutory noncompliance does not violate Maryland’s separation of powers when the sanction authority is expressly conferred by statute and serves a classic judicial enforcement function.
- A constitutional argument waived by abandoning it on appeal may nonetheless be decided on the merits when the court invites supplemental briefing and the issue is likely to recur.
Why It Matters
Maryland’s forensic mental health system has been under strain for years, with commitment orders outpacing available beds and IST defendants languishing in county detention facilities — settings ill-suited to psychiatric treatment — for months beyond the statutory deadline. This decision confirms that circuit courts wield meaningful enforcement leverage under the 2018 amendments to CP § 3-106, and that the Department cannot defeat sanctions simply by pointing to system-wide capacity constraints or by belatedly securing placement. Defense attorneys representing IST clients can now seek daily monetary sanctions with greater confidence that those sanctions will withstand appellate scrutiny, and the ruling creates a sustained financial incentive for the Department to accelerate both admissions and the discharge of patients who are clinically ready to leave designated facilities.
More broadly, the ruling clarifies the constitutional permissibility of legislative delegations authorizing courts to sanction state agencies — a question with implications beyond the mental health context wherever the General Assembly has chosen judicial enforcement as a mechanism to compel executive compliance with statutory mandates. With three justices dissenting, however, the precise contours of “reasonably designed to compel compliance” — particularly the per-day waiting-list-management framework — may continue to generate litigation as courts and the Department negotiate what the standard demands in practice.