Opinion ID: 1472872
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Power of the Attorney General

Text: The Attorney General is acting pursuant to authorization in a series of letters from the Governor of Maryland. See the reference to those letters in In Re Special Investigation No. 195, 295 Md. at 277. Maryland Const. art. V, § 3(a) provides in relevant part: (a) The Attorney General shall: (1) ... (2) Investigate, commence, and prosecute or defend any ... criminal suit or action or category of such suits ... which ... the Governor, shall have directed or shall direct to be investigated, commenced and prosecuted or defended. Appellants assert, The broad grant to the Attorney General by the Governor is in derogation of, and conflicts with, what the General Assembly has conferred on the State's Attorneys and Special Prosecutor. It is elementary that constitutional provisions prevail over statutory provisions. In the wake of Murphy v. Yates, 276 Md. 475, 348 A.2d 837 (1975), the Constitution was amended so that art. V, § 9 now provides, The State's Attorney shall perform such duties ... as shall be prescribed by the General Assembly, thereby permitting the creation of a State Prosecutor by act of the General Assembly. See Code (1957, 1981 Repl. Vol.) Art. 10, § 33B. Murphy held that under the Constitution as it then existed the attempt by the General Assembly to create a State Prosecutor infringed upon the powers granted to State's attorneys by the Constitution. Appellants seek to rely upon what was proposed by the Constitutional Convention of 1967, and rejected by the people in 1968, as in some way illustrating an intent that the Attorney General not have the power here sought to be used. That proposed Constitution can effectively be used to interpret our present Constitution, that from the Convention of 1867, only in the case of an amendment to the present Constitution adopting some of the language of the proposed Constitution, as has been done in certain instances. The argument here overlooks the fact that there were a substantial number of delegates at the 1967 Convention who sought to avoid cluttering our basic document with what they considered to be unnecessary matter. See the discussion by J. Wheeler, Jr. & M. Kinsey, Magnificent Failure  The Maryland Constitutional Convention of 1967-1968, 157-59 (1970). We hold that the Attorney General in this instance is fully vested with the power to pursue the investigation in question.