Court Opinion

ID: 9696347
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:45:28.61653+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:21.494825
License: Public Domain

Moylan, J.,

dissenting:
Respectfully, I dissent. I am afraid that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, particularly as improved upon by Maryland Rule 719c, has run amok. The historic protection of permitting a man without counsel to be represented was a milestone in the march forward of human liberty. The extension, by virtue of the equal protection *66clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, of that right to counsel to deserving and needy indigents was also a great leap forward. To permit obstructionist defendants, who have already been provided assistance at public expense, to pervert these guarantees of liberty is to allow a salutary process to pass the point of diminishing returns. Exercising my own independent constitutional judgment, I conclude that the appellant here exercised a voluntary and intelligent waiver under the rigid waiver standards of Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U. S. 458, 58 S. Ct. 1019, 82 L. Ed. 1461 (1938). That strict waiver standard should be enough. If Maryland Rule 719c has imposed a rigid Miranda v. Arizona or Boykin v. Alabama type of catechism above and beyond Johnson v. Zerbst waiver, we will be permitting clever defendants to disrupt the process to no good end. I do not quarrel with the syllogism of the majority opinion in this case. I simply maintain, as one small voice of protest, that if Maryland Rule 719c compels this result, Maryland Rule 719c is an absurdity.