Court Opinion

ID: 9759134
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 00:06:40.351713+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:59.692628
License: Public Domain

Cole, J.,

dissenting:

I disagree with the Court’s holding today. The majority makes an egregious error in overruling State v. Saul, 258 Md. 100, 265 A.2d 178 (1970), and disapproving Young v. State, 5 Md. App. 383, 247 A.2d 751 (1968). As the majority correctly notes, "]t]hose opinions limit the harmless error doctrine to events which were not regarded as stages of the trial and hold that prejudice was conclusively presumed if the defendant was absent from a stage of the trial.” The majority’s effort to distinguish Saul and Young from other *574right to be present cases is, in my judgment, fallacious. If, indeed, the right to be present is a defendant’s absolute, constitutional right, the majority’s application of the Dorsey (harmless error) test thoroughly eviscerates that right. Moreover, the majority misapplies Dorsey. No longer is the reviewing court called upon to declare a belief beyond a reasonable doubt that the error did not influence the verdict; it may now overcome such doubt based on no more than the court’s bald speculation as to what the defendant may or may not have done had he been present. It seems to me that the Court’s opinion today makes meaningless what we said in Bunch v. State, 281 Md. 680, 688, 381 A.2d 1142 (1978), quoting approvingly from People v. Medcoff, 344 Mich. 108, 73 N.W.2d 537 (1955), that

We recognize that all that transpired between judge and jurors as well as the court’s conclusion that there had been no misconduct is in the record before us. Therefore, it is argued that defendants have shown no prejudice. However, the abrogation of defendants’ right to be present is not determined from the result and review thereof of the court’s inquiry but rather from the mere fact that during the inquiry defendants were not given an opportunity to exercise those privileges which their right to be present affords them. [Emphasis supplied.]

The net effect of the holding in the case sub judice and in other recent decisions of the Court dealing with the right to be present at every stage of the trial is to require the defendant, at the risk of being obstreperous, to personally assert his right to be present whenever there is any chance encounter at the bench between the trial judge and the lawyers, in order to overcome his ignorance and assure himself that what the judge and counsel do does not inure to his detriment. This is a giant step backward. I, therefore, dissent.
Judge Davidson authorizes me to state that she concurs in the views expressed herein.