In Nightingale v. State, 312 Md. 699, 542 A.2d 373 (1988), the Court of Appeals considered two defendants who claimed that their sentences for child abuse and sexual offenses could not stand, because the crimes were the same under the required evidence test of Blockburger. Id. at 702. The first defendant, Nightingale, received two consecutive fifteen-year sentences for child abuse and second degree sexual offense, resulting from his conduct between 1977 and 1982. Id. at 701. The second defendant, Myers, was found guilty of two counts of child abuse, one count of second degree sexual offense, two counts of third degree sexual offense, and two counts of fourth degree sexual offense, on two consolidated informations stemming from his conduct from 1983 through 1985. Id. Myers received four concurrent sentences for the first criminal information (the longest being twenty years for second degree sexual offense), three concurrent sentences for the second criminal information (the longest being fifteen years for child abuse with ten years suspended); and the sentences for the second criminal information were made consecutive to those imposed in the first criminal information. Id. at 702. The Court of Special Appeals affirmed the convictions and sentences of Nightingale and Myers in two unreported opinions. Id. at 701-02. The Court of Appeals granted certiorari to determine whether separate convictions and sentences for both child abuse and second, third, or fourth degree sexual offense are improper where the State relies on and proves the sexual offense to sustain the child abuse conviction. Id. at 700. After analyzing the relevant statutes, the Court stated that child abuse, taken in its broadest sense, involves certain elements (e.g., physical harm and a particular relationship between actor and victim) that none of the sexual offenses do. By the same token, each of the sexual offenses requires some element (e.g., performance of a sexual act or sexual contact and sexual arousal or gratification) that child abuse does not. But the analysis does not end at this point. When a multi-purpose criminal statute is involved, we refine it by looking at the alternative elements relevant to the case at hand. Id. at 705. The Court then concluded that each jury could have found the defendant before it guilty of child abuse based solely on evidence of a sexual offense in some degree. If that were done, then the sexual offense became, in effect, a lesser included offense of sexual child abuse, and . . . the offenses are the same for double jeopardy purposes. Id. at 708. The Court, however, could not merge the sexual offenses into the child abuse convictions under the required evidence test, because "we cannot tell whether these general verdicts of guilty were based on the use of sexual offenses as lesser included offenses (or elements) of child abuse, or whether the child abuse verdicts were based on other reasons (e.g., some sort of sexual molestation which the juries thought did not rise to the level of a sexual offense in any degree)." Id. Nevertheless, the Court resolved the ambiguity in favor of the defendants and set aside the judgments on the sexual offense counts. Id. In Nightingale v. State, the petitioners alleged that double jeopardy precluded their convictions and sentences for child abuse and sexual offense because the crimes were the same under the required evidence test. Id. at 702. In analyzing that argument, the Court of Appeals stated: It is apparent . . .that child abuse, taken in its broadest sense, involves certain elements (e.g., physical harm and a particular relationship between actor and victim) that none of the sexual offenses do. By the same token, each of the sexual offenses requires some elements (e.g., performance of a sexual act or sexual contact and sexual arousal or gratification) that child abuse does not. But the analysis does not end at this point. When a multi-purpose criminal statute is involved, we refine it by looking at the alternative elements relevant to the case at hand. Id. at 705. The Court of Appeals further noted that 'if, when we look at the applicable alternative elements, a lesser offense in effect becomes one of the elements of another offense, the Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299 (1932) test is met." Id. at 707. The Nightingale Court then determined that "sexual offense became, in effect, a lesser included offense of child abuse" because the petitioners were found guilty solely on the basis of sexual offense in some degree. Id. at 708.