Court Opinion

ID: 9758419
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 23:30:16.866702+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:51.086078
License: Public Domain

RODOWSKY, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. This is not because I perceive any misstep in the reasoning of the majority. The Court’s opinion, beginning from the premise of State v. Hicks, 285 Md. 310, 403 A.2d 356, on motion for reconsideration, 285 Md. 334, 403 A.2d 368 (1979), marches with impeccable judicial logic and by stare decisis to the mandate of dismissal. The problem lies in Hicks’ holding that, absent waiver or consent, the sanction for noncompliance with § 591 and Rule 746 ordinarily is dismissal of the criminal charges.
The policy underlying § 591 and Rule 746 is to obtain the prompt disposition of criminal cases. Assigning an early trial date, coupled with a strictly enforced policy against postponements, reduces backlogs and the advantages from sheer delay sought particularly by those with no meritorious defense. These are generally accepted caseload management techniques. Hicks superimposed a dismissal sanction apparently to prevent “almost wholesale violations of the statute and rule.” 285 Md. at 334, 403 A.2d at 369. While § 591 and Rule 746 are mandatory, violation of a mandatory rule does not automatically carry dismissal as the sanction. See In re Dewayne H., 290 Md. 401, 430 A.2d 76 (1981). Underlying the Hicks choice of dismissal must have been the belief that so stringent a sanction was necessary to achieve the policy goal. Events subsequent to Hicks cast doubt on the validity of that belief.
Hicks was written against a background in which Rule 746 had utilized 120 days since July 1, 1977. The opinion was filed on June 25, 1979 and the per curiam opinion denying the State’s motion for reconsideration was filed July 19, 1979. By order of this Court adopted and effective Novem*14ber 16,1979, based upon “finding that an emergency does in fact exist,” Rule 746 was amended to 180 days. I shall test against the longer period.
In fiscal 1977 there had been only one jurisdiction (Dorchester) and in fiscal 1978 there had been only one jurisdiction (Harford) where the average time from filing to trial or hearing of a circuit court criminal case exceeded 180 days.1 The statewide average time from filing to disposition of circuit court criminal cases for fiscal 1978 was 166 days.2 However, during that year there were seven jurisdictions in which the average time from filing to disposition exceeded 180 days: Baltimore City (189), Prince George’s (187), Calvert (185), Howard (187), Harford (202), Queen Anne’s (891) and Wicomico (238).3 For the year ending June 80, 1979, during which the June 25,1979 Hicks opinion could have had no effect on what was happening, the statistics are significantly better. Statewide average time from filing to trial or hearing, a computation not previously made, was reported to be 126 days during fiscal 1979, and no jurisdiction’s average exceeded 180 days. The statewide average time from filing to disposition dropped from 166 to 159 days. There was a reduction from seven to three in the number of jurisdictions where the average time from filing to disposition exceeded 180 days. These three were Howard (224), Harford (220) and Prince George’s (187). Baltimore City’s average time from filing to disposition dropped from 189 days to 167.4 These reductions were effected when dismissal was not the *15sanction. They presumably were produced by techniques of judicial administration.
The most recent AOC Report does not furnish any average times from filing to trial or hearing. However, the statewide average time from filing to disposition was 159 days for fiscal 1983. This is the same statewide average achieved without benefit of Hicks in fiscal 1979.5 I do not believe it can be demonstrated that a dismissal sanction is necessary in order to achieve the policy of § 591 and Rule 746 or that administering the criminal caseload without that sanction would produce “almost wholesale violations” in reference to a 180 day standard.
Dismissal as the sanction should also be considered in light of the way in which the violation in the present case arose. On the morning of August 4,1981 this case and an unrelated criminal case were assigned for trial before the same circuit judge. An experienced assistant state’s attorney appeared for the prosecution in both cases. He elected to go to trial with the unrelated matter. That case was State v. Nathan Ray Thomas, Baltimore County Criminal Case No. 72375, in which the State had served notice that it was seeking the death penalty and in which the jury on August 17 imposed a death sentence. From the standpoint of counsel in litigation, the stress of prosecuting a death penalty case is exceeded only by the stress of defending such a case. Under these circumstances the assistant state’s attorney understandably omitted appearing before the administrative judge, or arranging for a colleague to appear before the administrative judge, in order to obtain approval of a postponement of the instant case beyond the 180th day. Had that approval been *16sought, its grant was so clearly compelled as to be nearly perfunctory.
The present case forcefully illustrates that the burden of bringing criminal cases to trial is borne by human beings. No matter how highly motivated and conscientious a prosecutor might be, a critical date can slip by without required action having been taken. When human error strikes, it can strike, as here, in the case of a convicted murderer-robber-kidnapper. By dismissing, we do not eliminate future human error from the system. By dismissing, a court does not sanction the individual responsible for the violation. The moving party in a criminal case is the State as representative of the people of Maryland. They are wholly innocent of any § 591 and Rule 746 violation, but they are the persons punished when violation results in dismissal. In the name of swift prosecution the Hicks sanction incongruously aborts any prosecution. It confers the ultimate benefit on the accused without any regard to the merits of the case. In sum, the sanction is unnecessary, misdirected and disproportionate.
For these reasons I believe that so much of Hicks as adopts the dismissal sanction should be overruled.
A perfectly sound approach to this problem was recommended to this Court by the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure in its Eighty-Second Report. It proposed a new rule, l-201(a), which would read in part (10:10 Md.R. S-7 (May 13, 1983)):
When a rule, by the word “shall” or otherwise, mandates or prohibits conduct, the consequences of noncompliance are those prescribed by these rules or by statute. If no consequences are prescribed, the court may compel compliance with the rule or may determine the consequences of the noncompliance in light of the totality of the circumstances and the purpose of the rule, except that a court may dismiss a charging document for noncompliance with a rule mandating or prohibiting conduct only if it determines that the State's failure to comply with the rule has *17resulted in the violation of a constitutional right of the defendant. [Emphasis added.]
However, at an open conference held on June 23, 1983 following public notice, a majority of the Court voted to delete the above-italicized language from the proposed rule.

. Administrative Office of the Courts, Annual Report of the Maryland Judiciary, 1977-1978, Statistical Abstract, Table E-7. Hereinafter these annual statistical abstracts will be referred to as the “AOC Report.”

. AOC Report 1978-79, Table E-9.

. AOC Report 1978-79, Table E-9.

. AOC Report 1978-79, Table E-8. Baltimore City figures reflect only felony cases and are the only Baltimore City figures utilized in computing the statewide average.

. AOC Report 1982-83, Table CC-33. Interestingly, Table CC-33 reflects that in fiscal 1983, when dismissal had been the announced sanction for three to four years, the average time from filing to disposition exceeded 180 days in six counties, Cecil, Queen Anne’s, Harford, Garrett, Washington and Carroll. However, if cases which had been on the docket over 360 days were excluded, no jurisdiction exceeded an average of 180 days to disposition.