Court Opinion

ID: 9733061
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:51:56.181129+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:38.095185
License: Public Domain

Gilbert, J.,

dissenting:

I adopt the words of Mr. Justice Holmes in Northern Sec. Co. v. United States, 193 U. S. 197, 400, 24 S. Ct. 436, 468, 48 L. Ed. 679, 726 (1904), that:
“. . . [Although I think it useless and undesirable, as a rule, to express dissent, I feel bound to do so in this case and to give my reasons for it.”
This Court, speaking through Chief Judge Orth in English v. State, 16 Md. App. 439, 298 A. 2d 464 (1973), cert. granted 268 Md. 748, dismissed July 3, 1973,1 after quoting from our summary in Williams v. State, 10 Md. App. 570, 571-72, 271 A. 2d 777, 778 (1970), analyzing Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U. S. *61238, 89 S. Ct. 1709, 23 L.Ed.2d 274 (1969), went on to point out at 445-46 that:
. . [T]he accused has the right to testify in his own behalf. This is a statutory right in this jurisdiction. Code, Art. 35, § 4. Although he is a competent witness, he is not a compellable witness under the statute, nor could he be, for to make him so would violate the guarantee against self-incrimination. Thus, the constitutional right against compulsory self-incrimination adheres to the accused tendering a plea of guilty with respect to his right not to testify at the trial which the plea waives. We believe that it is in this context that Boykin refers to the privilege against self-incrimination guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment as involved in a waiver that takes place when a plea of guilty is offered in a state criminal trial. 395 U. S. at 243. The Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination means ‘the right of a person to remain silent unless he chooses to speak in the unfettered exercise of his own will, and to suffer no penalty * * * for such silence.’ Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1, 8. Therefore, in order for an accused to waive the privilege against self-incrimination as it applies to his trial on a criminal charge he must understand that he has the right not to testify and that no unfavorable inference may arise from his not testifying. Unless the record affirmatively shows that he understood this privilege and waived it in the constitutional sense, acceptance of his plea of guilty is not effective. ’’(Emphasis supplied). (Footnote omitted).
In the instant case the majority injects into the Maryland law relative to guilty pleas, a doctrine not heretofore followed in this State, insofar as such pleas are concerned. They style their newly discovered panacea, “substantial compliance”. To underpin the invoking of the “substantial compliance” doctrine, the majority rely upon the trial *62judge’s 1) informing the accused that the accused did not have to take the witness stand unless he desired to do so, and 2) that if he did not choose to take the stand, “the prosecuting attorney ... [could] not comment or make reference to ... [the accused’s] failure to testify.” Seemingly conceding, but not articulating that those two reasons either individually or jointly fail to amount to “substantial compliance”, the majority seize upon the trial judge’s advising the accused that the accused was presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The majority then add the three reasons together and conclude that, in the aggregate, there has been “substantial compliance”. As a caveat to the holding, trial judges are admonished that it is “preferable” that the defendant be informed that his failure to testify “may not be used as an inference to be weighed on the issue of guilt.”
It seems to me that the majority opinion has the effect of eroding English, supra, and establishing a case by case approach. The Bench and Bar alike no longer may home in on English, a well lit beacon, to guide them through the constitutional maze surrounding a plea of guilty. The trial court, the advocate and the accused are now cast adrift without a rudder. The majority opinion both saps English and extinguishes its bright light.
Chief Justice Vinson, in a dissenting opinion in Trupiano v. United States, 334 U. S. 699, 716, 68 S. Ct. 1229, 1238, 92 L.Ed. 1663, 1675 (1948), stated:
“At best, the operation of the rule which the Court today enunciates for the first time may be expected to confound confusion in a field already. replete with complexities.”
In my view the late Chief Justice Vinson may well have been writing about the instant case.
As I see it the majority equate the fact that an accused, must be informed that the trier of fact may not draw an unfavorable inference from the accused’s failure to testify, with the accused’s being told that a prosecuting attorney will not be allowed to make reference to a failure to testify. *63Precisely how the two situations are analagous escapes me. “I do not understand; I pause; I examine,” 2 but I still do not comprehend.
Furthermore, it is to be noted that the trial judge informed Mr. Davis that:
“. . . [I]n order to make certain that you are entering your pleas of guilty to these three counts willingly, freely, knowingly and with some degree of intelligence, it is necessary that I ask you a few questions and determine that fact.” (Emphasis supplied).
The law, as I understand it, does not provide that an accused enter the plea with “some degree of intelligence,” but rather that the plea be intelligently made. Williams v. State, supra. If we, henceforth, are called upon to ascertain, in each case, whether the accused, “with some degree of intelligence,” made and understood the full effect of a guilty plea, we tread upon a pit of quicksand, and the pit is bottomless. If the measure of intelligence required to enter a constitutionally valid plea of guilty is “some degree of intelligence,” I fail to see how any such plea can be constitutionally infirm. Unless the accused is, in the vernacular “a vegetable,” it is difficult to visualize a human being who does not possess “some degree of intelligence.”
Without belaboring the issue needlessly, it follows that I would hold that the trial judge failed to comply with the rule of English, supra, and therefore, committed reversible error. I would reverse and remand for a new trial.
A final word is in order. If this Court is of the opinion that English is to be buried,3 then we should, at the very least, provide it with a decent funeral, and not merely scuttle it by inference.

. The appeal was apparently dismissed because it had been improvidently granted.

. Michel Eyquem De Montaigne (1533-1592), Inscription for his library.

. An opinion that I do not share.