In Williams v. State, 100 Md. App. 468, 641 A.2d 990 (1994), the defendant was convicted of assault with intent to maim under Md. Code (1957, 1992 Repl. Vol.), Art. 27, 386, as well as reckless endangerment, in violation of Art. 27, 120(a). The charges arose from a "drunken barroom fight," id. at 472, in which the appellant intervened and twice stabbed a person who was engaged in an altercation with appellant's brother. The court sentenced Williams to ten years' incarceration for assault, and to a concurrent term of five years for reckless endangerment. On appeal, Williams complained that he could have been convicted and punished for either offense, but not for both. Id. at 473. He insisted that the reckless endangerment conviction should have merged. Writing for the Court, Judge Moylan indicated that, even if the crime of reckless endangerment and "unintended battery" are distinct offenses, "multiple punishment will nonetheless be prohibited and merger will still be required in those particular instances where the inchoate crime of reckless endangerment has ripened into an instance of the consummated crime of unintended battery." Id. at 489. He added: "The crime involving potential harm will merge into the crime involving actual harm on an ad hoc basis, even if not as a universal principle of double jeopardy law." Id. at 490. The Williams Court observed that the crime of reckless endangerment may move "along the line of an escalating mens rea. . . ." Id. at 490. The Court elaborated, id. "To move from reckless endangerment, where one is simply indifferent to the threat to the victim, to one of the more malicious crimes where death or serious bodily harm is affirmatively desired or specifically intended -- such as attempted murder, attempted manslaughter, attempted mayhem, assault with intent to murder, assault with intent to maim, etc. -- primarily involves racheting the mens rea up to the next level of blameworthiness." In this context, the Williams Court addressed "whether the mens rea of reckless endangerment is a lesser included mental state that may merge into the more blameworthy mens rea of assault with intent to maim, etc. (or assault with intent to murder or attempted murder or attempted manslaughter or attempted mayhem, etc.) . . . ." Id. at 491. The Court said, id. at 501: "It is undisputed that a specific intent to do harm is not part of the mens rea of reckless endangerment. Maryland's reckless endangerment statute, as all reckless endangerment statutes, spells out expressly what the mens rea of the crime is. It is required that the defendant's conduct be "reckless." "Reckless" describes a mental state or a mens rea. Before inquiring further into what that mens rea is, it is appropriate to state what it is not. It is not a specific intent to inflict harm." Further, the Williams Court said, id. at 510: "The subjective mens rea of reckless indifference to a harmful consequence at a certain point along the rising continuum of blameworthiness may ripen into the even more blameworthy specific intent to inflict the harm. At that point, the lesser included offense of reckless endangerment merged into the greater inclusive offense of assault with intent to maim. Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299, 52 S.Ct. 180, 76 L.Ed. 306 (1932)." Thus, the Court concluded that the appellant "was guilty of a single criminal act in the course of a single criminal episode," and held that the conviction for reckless endangerment merged into the conviction for assault with intent to maim. Id. at 472.