Court Opinion

ID: 9640190
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:00:33.69603+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:03:12.137806
License: Public Domain

Hammond, J.,
filed the following dissenting opinion.
I dissent because it is plain to me that out of the minuscule molehill of a routine and harmless ruling by a trial judge in the ordinary course of a criminal trial this Court has made a momentous mountain of reversible error, amounting to a deprivation of due process of law.
The Court says that what occurred is reviewable on appeal for two reasons—one, because it unconstitutionally deprived the accused of a fair trial and two, because his counsel preserved it for review by objecting to it under Maryland Rule 522. Taking the latter ground first, it seems to me inescapable from the record that, assuming that rule to be applicable, the only objection ever made or thought of by appellant’s counsel was to the allowing of leading questions by the State’s Attorney of *12the witness Davis. When the State’s Attorney first asked a leading question, defense counsel said: “* * * I object to this”; and when the court said “Why ?” answered: “Because he can’t lead the witness * * Then when the State’s Attorney said of the witness: “* * * he is a hostile witness and I would like to have him declared as such,” and the court said: “I will declare him as such. Go ahead” (clearly to continue to ask leading questions), defense counsel said again: “I object,” (equally clearly, it seems to me), not to the judge’s agreeing with the States’ Attorney’s characterization of the witness as hostile but to the permitting of leading questions. No one, including the majority, questions that the witness was hostile or the propriety of allowing leading questions of him.
Deprivation of due process is found by the majority because Judge Rollins, in ruling that “I will declare him as such,” in response to the State’s Attorney’s statement that Davis was a hostile witness, destroyed or damaged prejudicially the credibility of the witness. To me this approaches, if it does not embrace, the fanciful. Of the State’s witnesses only one gave support to the State sufficient to make a case for a jury to pass on. The others, of whom Davis was but one, all were obviously not sympathetic to the State’s effort to convict and said from the stand as little as they could, and that reluctantly. But because a witness is reluctant to help the State or hurt the accused—in other words, is “hostile” to the State—does not necessarily mean that what testimony can be extracted from him is not to be believed. If this were so, the rule permitting the asking of leading questions of such a witness, the reason for and the aim of which is to elicit the truth, would be meaningless. It is not meaningless, any more than is the right to ask leading questions on cross-examination of a witness who has been produced by the other side. He, too, often is a “hostile” witness but this does not make his testimony on cross-examination incredible.
We pay lip service to trial by jury as a bulwark of the protection of individual rights, but judicial treatment of whether a particular jury has been influenced towards unfair determination of those rights often seems to proceed on the assumption, contrary to the theory on which the jury system is based *13and supposed to operate, that the men and women on that jury-lacked average intelligence, common sense, experience and judgment. There would seem no reason in the case before us to think the jury was led to believe that Judge Rollins was announcing that he thought the witness was not a truthful man and not to be believed. It must have been apparent to them that he was merely recognizing, as every one else in the court room by then must have, that the witness wanted to say as little as he could and that, therefore, the State, in an effort to overcome his hostility towards testifying, should be able to ask him questions which would require him to give information.
The claim that the passing remark of the trial judge made the trial unfair to the point of being unconstitutional under “the present-day concept of due process of law” (quite obviously meaning largely the concept now held by the Supreme Court and lower federal courts) would seem to rest on a foundation of sand.
Maryland has adhered generally to the much—and to me, justly—criticized rule that the trial judge should be only an umpire. For an example of that criticism, see 3 Wigmore (3rd Ed. 1940), Sec. 784. Many courts of other jurisdictions, including those of the federal judicial system, have taken the broader approach and have held that a nisi prius judge may express his views on the merits of the case, including the guilt of the accused in exceptional cases (where guilt is clear), and as to the bearing and weight of the testimony, including its credibility, provided he makes it unequivocally plain to the jury that they independently and for themselves must make the ultimate determination. This is the practice in Great Britian and Canada. Chitty (Brickwood’s Packett on Instruction to Juries), p. 126, et seq., says:
“It is the practice for the judge at nisi prius not only to state to the jury all the evidence that has been given, but to comment on its bearing and weight, and to state the legal rules upon the subject and their application to the particular case, and to advise them as regards the verdict they should give.”
New Jersey has adopted the English rule, State v. Hummer, *1465 A. 249, as has California, People v. Busby (Dis. Ct. App. Calif.), 104 P. 2d 531; People v. Ottey (Calif.), 56 P. 2d 193, and apparently also Connecticut, Michigan and Pennsylvania, Commonwealth v. Romano (Pa.), 141 A. 2d 597; People v. Lintz (Mich.), 222 N. W. 201; State v. Journey (Conn.), 161 A. 515.
In United States v. Murdock, 290 U. S. 389, 394, 78 L. Ed. 381, Mr. Justice Roberts for the Court said (holding the rule not applicable on the facts) :
“Although the power of the judge to express an opinion as to the guilt of the defendant exists, it should be exercised cautiously and only in exceptional cases. Such an expression of opinion was held not to warrant a reversal where upon the undisputed and admitted facts the defendant’s voluntary conduct amounted to the commission of the crime defined by the statute. Horning v. District of Columbia, 254 U. S. 135, 65 L. Ed. 185, 41 S. Ct. 53.”
See also United States v. Link (3rd Cir.), 202 F. 2d 592.
In United States v. Kravitz (3rd Cir.), 281 F. 2d 581, the judge said to the jury: “Let me say quite frankly to you that I do not believe Joseph Abrams [a witness] absolutely * * Judge Goodrich for the Court held this was not reversible error.
This Court has said that a judge should not reflect on the credibility of a witness. Newton v. State, 147 Md. 71. As, has been noted, it is clear to me that Judge Rollins did not do this, but if it be assumed that he did and that, therefore, the error, if properly reserved for appellate review—as it was not— would amount to reversible error under Maryland law, this does not mean that the error deprived the accused of due process of law which requires reversal on the initiative of the reviewing appellate Court.
Judge Rollins’ ruling that he recognized Davis as a hostile witness reflected only what was undeniably and obviously true. In his charge, Judge Rollins instructed the jury, that anything he said as to the evidence was advisory only and not binding on therm If it be assumed that by the form of the trial judge’s *15ruling he conveyed to the jury the impression that he thought the witness to be unworthy of belief, this would not have constituted reversible error, much less come close to a denial of due process of law in a trial in the federal courts or those of many states. The phrase in Art. 23 of the Declaration of Rights of the Maryland Constitution, “That no man ought to be taken or imprisoned * * * or deprived of his life, liberty or property, but * * * by the law of the land” has been held to be synonymous with the words “due process of law” as used in the Constitution of the United States, Slansky v. State, 192 Md. 94, and the Court of Appeals is not at liberty to set up a Maryland concept of due process against controlling decisions of the Supreme Court. Raymond v. State, ex rel. Szydlouski, 192 Md. 602. The majority in the present case have treated a brief occurrence in a trial as constituting a deprivation of due process under Maryland law when it would not have been so treated under federal law.
I would affirm.