Opinion ID: 2382122
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Was The Objection Waived?

Text: The issue of waiver is important. If Perry's complaint about the admission of the tapes and identifying evidence, which we have found to be valid, was not effectively waived by the failure of counsel to make a timely objection, the judgment of the trial court would have been in error and, for that reason, Perry would be entitled to a new trial. If, on the other hand, the complaint was effectively waived by counsel's failure to make a timely objection, the trial court's judgment would not be in error, and Perry's quest for postconviction relief would depend on a finding that counsel's lack of diligence, which alone caused the judgment of the trial court to stand, amounted to a State or Federal Constitutional deficiency. When counsel first raised a wiretap law objection at trial, the court determined that the objection had been waived because (1) Perry had failed to move pre-trial to suppress the evidence, as required by Maryland Rule 4-252, and (2) the objection, in any event, came too late at trial after the tapes had been admitted into evidence and one of them had already been played in court. On appeal, we noted the existence of CJ § 10-408(i), which allows a motion to suppress an unlawfully intercepted communication to be made before or during the trial, and we made two preliminary comments regarding that statute. First, we held that it was not necessary for Perry to have called the court's attention to that statute in order to preserve his argument that the court should have considered his mid-trial motion. We then stated that we could not determine, on the record then before us, whether, had the court conducted a suppression hearing when the objection was made, Perry's motion would have been granted. Accordingly, we declined to address the matter further but noted that our decision not to do so was without prejudice to Perry's relying on § 10-408(i) in a post-conviction hearing. Perry, supra, 344 Md. at 229, 686 A.2d at 286. In acknowledging the existence of § 10-408(i), we did not suggest that it would suffice to trump the requirement of Rule 4-252, or permit a defendant to raise the issue at any time during the trial, even after the challenged evidence was already admitted and made known to the jury; we noted it only to allow its scope and function to be considered in a post-conviction proceeding. In his petition for post-conviction relief, Perry cited § 10-408(i) in support of his argument that the trial court erred in ruling that his objection was waived because of his failure to move pre-trial to suppress the evidence. The post-conviction court never addressed that issue. Having concluded, as a matter of law, that the evidence was admissible, the court found no need to address the issue of waiver. In this appeal, the State, in a footnote in its brief, urges that Rule 4-252, rather than § 10-408(i), applies and that the trial court's ruling was therefore correct. Its point is that the Rule unlike Section 10-408(i), deals only with criminal trials where pretrial suppression hearings are the norm. It is not necessary for us, in this appeal, to address the apparent conflict between Rule 4-252(a) and § 10-408, for it is clear that, even if we were to conclude that the statute prevails and that, pursuant to it, a motion to suppress an unlawfully intercepted wire communication may be made during the trial notwithstanding the failure to make such a motion pre-trial in accordance with the rule, Perry waived his right to complain by failing to make his objection when the evidence was first offered. Neither party has cited to us, and we have been unable to locate, any indication in the legislative history of the statute of what, precisely, the Legislature meant when, in 1977, it amended the initial version of the wiretap bill then before it to depart from the Federal approach and to allow motions to suppress to be made during a trial. Although it seems clear that the General Assembly did not intend to foreclose an objection if not made before trial, as the Federal Act did, we do not believe that it intended to override wellestablished principles of trial procedure, one of which requires that objections to evidence be made at the time the challenged evidence is first offered. See Martin v. State, 203 Md. 66, 72, 98 A.2d 8, 11 (1953) (reviewing earlier cases and confirming that one against whom evidence is offered must object as soon as the applicability of the evidence is known or should reasonably have been known to him, and that an objection not made at that time is waived). That principle is now codified in Maryland Rule 4-323(a) and its civil action and district court counterparts, Rules 2-517(a) and 3-517(a): An objection to the admission of evidence shall be made at the time the evidence is offered or as soon thereafter as the grounds for objection become apparent. Otherwise, the objection is waived. The requirement of a contemporaneous objection is a necessary and salutary one, designed to assure both fairness and efficiency in the conduct of trials. A party cannot be permitted to sit back and allow the opposing party to establish its case, or any part of its case, through unchallenged evidence and then, when it may be too late for the opposing party to recover, to seek to strike the evidence. The sporting theory of trial does not go that far, and we do not believe that, by allowing suppression motions to be made during trial, the Legislature intended to introduce that pernicious element into our jurisprudence. In this case, the trial judge found no good cause, based, at least in part, on the fact that counsel did not make his objection until the 11th day of trialafter the tapes were already in evidence and after one of them had been played for the jury. Counsel knew when they first heard the tape that it, coupled with the likely evidence of voice identifications, was an important and damaging piece of evidence, and they knew that Horn had made the recording without Perry's consent. In 1991more than three years before counsel learned of the Horn tapethis Court decided Mustafa v. State, supra, 323 Md. 65, 591 A.2d 481, expressly holding that a communication intercepted in another jurisdiction, but in violation of the Maryland wiretap law, was inadmissible in a Maryland court, even if the interception was not unlawful in the jurisdiction where it was made. Both the factual and legal information necessary to support a motion to suppress the Horn tape was therefore available to counsel (and through counsel to Perry) well before the commencement of trial. Other than counsel's failure to recognize the significance of that information, there was no basis whatever for counsel, and thus Perry, to have abandoned the motion to suppress the Horn tape and wait until the tapes and at least one voice identification were already in evidence before the motion was effectively made. Accordingly, Perry's complaint over the admission of State's Exhibits 312 and 342 and the voice-identification testimony relating to them was effectively waived, and, for that reason, the admission of that evidence was not reversible error.