Opinion ID: 2317297
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: The Declaration of Rights vs. the Constitution

Text: At the hub of Lodowski's claim of error in the removal of the three counts is that Article 20 of the Declaration of Rights and Article IV, § 8 of the Maryland Constitution are in conflict and must be harmonized. He urges that [t]he correct solution, and the resolution which gives effect to both provisions, would be to permit removal by the State in capital cases on the same basis that it is permitted in non-capital cases  the prosecution should be obligated to demonstrate to a neutral third party that it genuinely cannot obtain a fair trial in the original jurisdiction. He asserts that [n]o such showing was made in this case, and concludes: Accordingly, the case should not have been removed, and [he] is entitled to a new trial. The answer to Lodowski's contention was resolved some one hundred and twenty-five years ago. This Court said in Baltimore v. State, 15 Md. 376, 459 (1860): [W]e are to bear in mind that the Declaration of Rights is not to be construed by itself, according to its literal meaning; it and the Constitution compose our form of government, and they must be interpreted as one instrument.... The former announces principles on which the government, about to be established, will be based. If they differ, the Constitution must be taken as a limitation or qualification of the general principle previously declared, according to the subject and the language employed. Anderson v. Baker, 23 Md. 531, 627 (1865), put it this way: As to the supposed conflict between the Constitution of Maryland and the Bill of Rights, as it is called, such a collision can scarcely occur, according to the accepted theory of the relation between these instruments. In representative constitutional governments, they are understood to be parts of a whole, constituting an entirety, and to be interpreted as one instrument. The Declaration of Rights is an enumeration of abstract principles, (or designed to be so,) and the Constitution the practical application of those principles, modified by the exigencies of the time or circumstances of the country. It then reiterates what was said in Baltimore v. State at 459: If they differ, the Constitution must be taken as a limitation of the principle previously declared, according to the subject and the language employed. Anderson v. Baker concludes: The Declaration of Rights is a guide to the several departments of government, in questions of doubt as to the meaning of the Constitution, and a guard against any extravagant or undue extension of power, but does not control the Constitution itself, when it is clear and unambiguous. Id. at 628. The relation between the Declaration of Rights and the Constitution as set out in Baltimore v. State and Anderson v. Baker was expressly recognized in Boyer v. Thurston, 247 Md. 279, 295, 231 A.2d 50 (1967). The statement of the law in those cases is the law as it exists today. In short, even if Art. 20 of the Declaration of Rights be construed to be in conflict with the absolute right of removal granted either party in a capital case by Art. IV, § 8 of the Constitution, the constitutional provisions prevail.