Court Opinion

ID: 9730217
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:05:20.934724+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:05.009344
License: Public Domain

*241Brune, C. J.,
filed the following opinion, dissenting in part, in which Prescott, J., concurred.
I concur in the holding of the court that the State’s consent to the removal of the case from Anne Arundel County to Montgomery County did not amount to an exercise by the State of its right of removal.
On the other hand, it is my view that the State’s acquiescence in the removal to Montgomery County did amount to a waiver of its right to seek removal to still another County. True, the State’s right of removal is constitutional, and unquestionably it was not bound to assent to the case being removed to any particular County; but when the State did, with undoubted knowledge of its own constitutional right, assent to the case being sent to a specifically designated County for trial, I think that it did both knowingly and voluntarily waive its absolute right to require further removal. Many a defendant in a criminal case has been found to have waived a constitutional right by words which seem to me no more forceful — for example, by agreeing to a police officer’s making a search of his premises, as in Armwood v. State, 229 Md. 565, 185 A. 2d 357. The State, in assenting to the removal, could easily have expressly reserved its right to further removal, had it wished to do so.
Judge Prescott has authorized me to say that he concurs in this dissent.