Court Opinion

ID: 9701075
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 22:03:35.94293+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:00:26.921395
License: Public Domain

Orth, J.,
concurring:
I agree that the State does not have the right to appeal to this Court from the granting of the defendant’s pretrial motion to suppress evidence alleged to have been obtained as a result of an unlawful search and seizure and I am in full accord with the reasons so clearly stated by Chief Judge Murphy, speaking for the Court, in arriving at this determination. But I think we should define the meaning of “inquisition in a criminal action” as used in Md. Code, Art. 5, § 14 in affirmative terms rather than deciding only that “it cannot properly be interpreted to authorize the State to appeal from the lower court’s granting of Mather’s pretrial motion to suppress the evidence.” I feel that any doubt as to its meaning should be laid to rest. Judge Murphy states that the term “bears close kinship to charging a person with crime by indictment, information or punishment” and that it “has generally been confined to a factual inquiry made by a jury, together with the instrument of writing upon which the jury’s decision is based.” I find it clear that within the context of § 14 “inquisition” refers only to a formal mode of charging a person with a crime and encompasses no broader meaning. At the common law the manner of the formal accusation of offenders, by prosecution, was either upon a previous finding of the fact by an inquest or grand jury, or without such previous finding. The former way was either by presentment or indictment. “Presentment” included, not only presentments properly, so called, but also inquisitions of office, and indictments by a grand jury.1 An “inquisition of office” *556was the act of a jury, summoned by a proper officer, to inquire of matters relating to the crown, upon evidence laid before them. Some of them were in themselves convictions, and could not afterwards be traversed or denied. Therefore, as to those, the inquest or jury should hear both sides. 2 Other inquisitions could be traversed and examined, as particularly the coroner’s inquisition in the death of a man, when it found anyone guilty of homicide; in such cases, the offender, so presented, must be arraigned upon this inquisition and might dispute the truth of it. See Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Law, Gavit Ed., Book IV, Ch. XXVIII, p. 877. A coroner’s inquest could be held only in cases of deaths when there was notice or reasonable suspicion of violent or unnatural death, or the death of a prisoner in jail. The proceedings were in the nature of a preliminary investigation and consisted essentially of the summoning of a jury, view of the body and inquisition.3 The scope of the inquiry was as to the circumstances of the death, and the persons, if any, who were culpable. The verdict of the jury was returned in the form of a certificate, signed (and generally sealed) by the coroner and all the jurors, finding when, where and how the deceased came to his death and who, if any, was culpable and to what extent. If one was accused of murder or manslaughter, or accessory thereto, by the verdict, it was the duty of the coroner to put in writing the effect of the evidence; to bind the witnesses for the prosecution to appear at the next term of *557the court having jurisdiction of the offense charged; to certify such evidence and recognizances together with the inquisition found to the court; to commit the accused for trial. At the strict common law, it had the effect of an indictment upon which the accused might be arraigned and tried. See Hochheimer’s Criminal Law, 1st Ed., §§ 391-405, pp. 246-252.4
In Maryland today a trial for a criminal offense shall be held only on indictment. Md. Rule 703. “Indictment,” as defined by Md. Rule 702a, “shall include an indictment, a criminal information, and a warrant issued by a justice of the peace where a jury trial was prayed before a trial magistrate or an appeal has been taken from a trial magistrate.” No man may be convicted by “inquisition of office” which he may not traverse and deny for, “in all criminal prosecutions, every man hath a right to be informed of the accusation against him; to have a copy of the Indictment, or charge, in due time (if required) to prepare for his defence; to be allowed counsel; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have process for his witnesses; to examine the witnesses for and against him on oath; and to a speedy trial by an impartial jury, without whose unanimous consent he ought not to be found guilty.” Constitution of Maryland, Declaration of Rights, Art. 21. And by Art. 23 of the Declaration of Rights “no man ought to be taken or imprisoned or disseized of his freehold, liberties or privileges, or outlawed, or exiled, or, in any manner, destroyed, or deprived of his life, liberty or property, but by the judgment of his peers, or by the Law of the land.” Nor does there exist today a coroner’s inquest leading to a verdict by a jury of inquisition which has the effect of an indictment upon which a person accused of murder or manslaughter may be arraigned and tried. The cor*558oner has been replaced by the Department of Postmortem Examiners with authority to appoint a chief medical examiner and other professional or technical personnel. Md. Code, Art. 22, §§ 1 and 2. When any person shall die “as a result of violence, or by suicide, or by casualty, or suddenly when in apparent health or when unattended by a physician, or in any suspicious or unusual manner,” the medical examiner shall take charge of the body and “fully investigate the essential facts concerning the medical causes of death.” Code, Art. 22, § 6. See also Code, Art. 43, § 20. But the medical examiner “shall not have the power or be required to summons a jury of inquisition.” Code, Art. 22, § 9.
I believe that the authority given the State by Code, Art. 5, § 14 to appeal from a final order or judgment granting a motion to dismiss any “inquisition in a criminal action,” in light of the Declaration of Rights, refers only to a verdict of a jury of inquisition, as distinguished from a grand jury, accusing a person of murder or manslaughter, or accessory thereto. As an accused may no longer be tried on such a verdict and as the power to summons such a jury for such purpose no longer exists, that provision of § 14 is an anachronism and is meaningless.

. A presentment, properly speaking, was the notice taken by a grand jury of any offense from their own knowledge or observation, without any bill of indictment laid before them at the suit of the king; after presentment the officer of the court must frame an indictment, before the party presented need answer. An in*556dictment was a written accusation of a person of a crime, preferred to, and presented upon oath by a grand jury.

. Of this nature, for example, were all inquisitions of felo de se — suicide; of flight in persons accused of felony; and deodands —any personal chattel which was the immediate occasion of the death of any reasonable creature, and which was forfeited to the crown to be applied to pious uses, and distributed in alms by the high almner. 1 Hale, P. C. 419.

. The coroner was the proper officer to take an inquest _ on view of the body. Inquisitions of homicide could be taken by justices of the peace, or other justices authorized to inquire of felonies, in cases when the body could not be found, or had laid so long, that a view could be of no assistance, or if there was danger of infection from digging up. 1 East. P. C. 379.

. For the history of the development of the criminal procedure which makes use _ of two “inquests” or “inquisitions,” one for the purpose of indictment, another for the purpose of trial, see The History of the English Law, Pollock and Maitland, Vol. II, Ch. IX, § 4, pp. 598-674.