Opinion ID: 2317297
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: The Equal Protection Guarantee of the Federal Constitution

Text: According to Lodowski, our holding that the specifics of the Constitution prevail over the generalities of the Declaration of Rights does not finally dispose of his claim of error in the removal of his case. He looks to the constitutional removal provision and urges that a construction of the Maryland Constitution which would permit the State a virtually unfettered right to remove the case of a capital defendant, while offering substantially greater protection against unwanted removal to a non-capital defendant, would contravene the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution. We first make an observation concerning Lodowski's statement with respect to the State having a virtually unfettered right to remove the case of a capital defendant.... We note that the State and the defendant are granted precisely the same absolute right of removal in a capital case. The right to a fair and impartial trial is not a one-way street on which only a defendant may travel; the right accrues to the State as well as to the defendant. This is so even when the State seeks the extreme penalty of death. The State, equally with the defendant, is entitled to a fair and impartial trial for the determination whether the corpus delicti of a crime punishable by death was committed and whether the accused was the criminal agent, and if so whether the defendant shall be executed as the State seeks. There is no affront to equal protection when the State is afforded the same opportunity as the defendant to assure a fair and impartial trial in such instance. We turn to Lodowski's notion that his guarantee of equal protection is contravened because the right of removal is different in capital cases than it is in noncapital cases. Article 20 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights recognizes the right of an accused to be tried where the facts arise, and this State has followed as a general rule that charges must be proffered and trial must be had in the county where the crime was committed. Although there has been statutory exceptions with respect to certain crimes, see Kisner v. State, 209 Md. 524, 530-534, 122 A.2d 102 (1956), ordinarily a Grand Jury may not indict and a State's Attorney may not try an accused in a jurisdiction outside the county in which the offense took place. But the right is not an absolute one. It is subject, as we have seen to the removal provisions contained in the body of the Maryland Constitution. This Court's statement by way of dictum in Kisner at 530, 122 A.2d 102, which was repeated in Stewart v. State, 275 Md. 258, 272, 340 A.2d 290 (1975), that the concept that the common law necessity for trial in the county of the commission of the crime is not a fundamental right or requirement (emphasis added), was made with the observation that [t]he Constitution of 1776 did not require and succeeding Maryland Constitutions have not required that the trial of an accused take place in the county where the crime was committed. Clearly this statement was made in the light of the right of removal, which, as we said more than three decades ago in Heslop v. State, 202 Md. 123, 126, 95 A.2d 880 (1953), has been considered so essential to the administration of justice that it has been incorporated in the organic law of the State for nearly a century and a half. There is no provision in the federal constitution which requires that a state trial of an accused take place in the county where the crime was committed. The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides, inter alia, that [i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law. ... (Emphasis added.) The draftsmen of the Bill of Rights specifically omitted the common law vicinage requirement as too restrictive. The provision as adopted represented a compromise which protected an individual from being tried by an alien body, but did not require a trial in the county where the crime was committed. Williams v. Florida, 399 U.S. 78, 93-96, 90 S.Ct. 1893, 1902-1904, 26 L.Ed.2d 446 (1970). Under this expanded vicinage rule the individual is guaranteed a trial `by an impartial jury of the State and district' where the crime was committed and the Legislature is given the power to define or designate the district. People v. Goldswer, 385 N.Y.S.2d 274, 277, 39 N.Y.2d 656, 350 N.E.2d 604, 608 (1976). In this State, under Art. IV, § 8 of our Constitution, district means simply some other court having jurisdiction in such case for trial. The Maryland Legislature has not defined nor designated district within the contemplation of the Sixth Amendment, nor does it otherwise establish where a criminal cause shall be removed. And Rule 744, following the language of Art. IV, § 8(b) and (c), refers to the place of removal only in terms of another court having jurisdiction in such case for trial. Whether the difference in the right of removal between capital and non-capital cases contravenes equal protection is to be tested by the rational basis standard. Lodowski claims, however, that even under this standard, the removal provisions deny him equal protection because, he opines, there is no rational basis for the distinction between removal as to crimes punishable by death and removal as to other crimes. We do not agree. The rational basis for the distinction shines bright and clear from the history of the provisions. The history of the constitutional removal provisions was traced by Judge Eldridge speaking for this Court in Johnson v. State, 271 Md. 189, 315 A.2d 524 (1974). He found that the first and only time that the distinction between capital cases and other criminal cases was made in the removal section of the Constitution was when the 1874 Legislature proposed the existing constitutional language. Johnson at 194, 315 A.2d 524, citing Heslop, 202 Md. at 126-30, 95 A.2d 880. Judge Eldridge asserted: [T]here is no basis in the language of the constitutional provision relating to removal, for inferring any purpose other than providing an additional procedural safeguard in a case where a criminal defendant might in fact be put to death. Art. IV, § 8, merely provides that a criminal defendant has an absolute right of removal if charged with an offense punishable by death. Johnson, 271 Md. at 193, 315 A.2d 524. He determined that [t]he history of the removal provision, therefore, shows a shifting concern between having a broad right of removal and having a very limited right because of the abuse associated with requests for removal. The present constitutional language resulted from a desire to narrow the right because of the abuses shown. No other intent is revealed by the historical material. Id. at 194, 315 A.2d 524. Thus it is that a sufficient rational basis for the distinction between removal as to crimes punishable by death and removal as to other crimes is that the distinction has proved to be essential to the administration of justice. We hold that the removal provisions of Art. IV, § 8 of the Maryland Constitution as implemented by Rule 744 do not offend the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal constitution.