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REPORTED IN THE COURT OF SPECIAL APPEALS OF MARYLAND No. 1099 September Term, 2005 ___________________________________

RONA LD M ARVIN WILLIS v. STATE OF MARYLAND

Salmon, Adkins, Meredith,

JJ.

Opinion by Meredith, J.

Filed: September 13, 2007

K050044660

On June 28, 2005, Ronald Marvin Willis, the appellant, was tried on an agreed statement of facts in the Circuit Court for Howard County. He was convicted of committing a theft that allegedly occurred eighteen years earlier (on August 7, 1987). On appeal, he raises a single issue : Did the circuit court ap ply an incorrec t legal standar d in denying h is motion to dismiss the indictmen t for excess ive pre-indic tment delay? Because the circuit court properly applied the standard adopted by the Court of Appeals in Clark v. State, 364 Md. 611 (200 1), we ans wer "no " to the question and affirm the judgment of the circu it court. On August 7, 1987, an apartment in Columbia was broken into, and money and electronic equipme nt were sto len. Althou gh some latent fingerprints were lifted from the crime scene in 1987, the prints were not utilized by the Howard County Police Department until 2003. Th e case lay dorm ant until Oc tober of 20 03, whe n Alan H affner, a p olice fingerprint specialist, beg an work ing on a "c old case" p roject, which he described as "going through a ll the latent prints sto red in our office, and doing searches on cases th at were still open [] to determine if there [were] suitable fingerprints in that case for search[ing by]" utilizing a compu ter program that comp ared fingerprints to those in a Maryland database. Haffner matched appellant's prints to those recovered from the apartment, using the Maryland computer fingerprint database that had been compiling known prints since 1991. Haff ner cou ld not sa y when appella nt's prin ts had b een ad ded to th at datab ase. On March 9, 2005, W illis was indicte d on seve ral counts rela ted to the 1 987 burg lary. He moved to dismiss the charges on the gro und that the unreason ably long pre-indictment delay deprived him of due process. Defense counsel proffered that appellant would have testified that he had no recollec tion of his w hereabou ts on the day the crime was committed. At the conclusion of the hearing on Willis's motion to dismiss, the court essentially agreed

with the State's po sition that Clark applies eve n in a cas e inv olving prope rty damag e only. Because the court found no evidence that there was any intentional delay on the part of the State, the court denied Willis's motion, stating: THE COURT: ... I will deny the defense motion; I've already said most of the reasons why in my discussions with counsel here. Obviously, there is some degree of prejudice to the defendant from

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Maryland Law