Opinion ID: 2402732
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: Constitutional Contentions.

Text: The remaining questions will not require elaborate discussions. The trial judge held that Article 21 of the Declaration of Rights, wherein it is stated that in criminal prosecutions every man has a right to examine the witnesses for and against him on oath, gave the traversers the right to take pre-trial depositions. The traversers claim that this holding is correct, and, in addition, assert that to deprive them of this right violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the nearly two hundred years of the existence of Maryland as a State, this, insofar as the recorded decisions of this Court disclose is the first time that such contentions have been made. We think the answer thereto is readily found in the opinion in the case of Lanasa v. State, 109 Md. 602, wherein the Court said: The object of these provisions [of Article 21 and the Fourteenth Amendment] was to declare and secure the pre-existing rights of the people as those rights had been established by usage and the settled course of law. The Court went on to hold that when a person is accused of crime by a sufficient indictment, and is subjected, like all other persons, to the law in its regular course, neither of the two constitutional provisions mentioned above is violated. We think we have stated enough above to show that the taking of pre-trial depositions in criminal cases was never a pre-existing right of the people as established by usage or the settled course of law. See also Minder v. Georgia, 183 U.S. 559, where the Court held that the failure of the State law to permit the taking of non-resident witnesses' depositions in criminal cases did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment. Cf. Leland v. Oregon, 343 U.S. 790 and Cicenia v. Lagay, 357 U.S. 504 (where the refusal to allow inspection of defendant's confessions was held not to deny due process, in the absence of a showing of prejudice); Whittle v. Munshower, supra . If the traversers be correct in these contentions, much effort and time of very eminent members of the Bench and Bar have been wasted in promulgating the Rules of this Court and the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, for if persons under indictment have a constitutional right to take the pre-trial depositions of the State's witnesses, Rule 727 of this Court and Federal Rule 15 have no meaningful vitality.