Court Opinion

ID: 9695603
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:24:44.919996+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:14.793898
License: Public Domain

GARRITY, Judge,
concurring.
I concur only in the result, that of a remand.
The important question raised by this case is what must a trial judge do when an indigent defendant’s attorney is excused for a meritorious reason, and the public defender’s office refuses to appoint new counsel.
At first glance, it appears that Md.Rule 4-215(e) provides the answer. Indeed, the majority embraced its language and reversed the judgment because the trial court did not fully comply with its provisions. On closer reflection, however, I contend that unless its pertinent language is employed in harmony with that of Art. 27A, § 6(f), which allows the court to appoint an attorney when the Office of Public Defender declines to do so, Rule 4-215(e) does not adequately address the problem at bar.1
Rule 4-215(e) provides, in essence, that if counsel is allowed to be discharged for a meritorious reason, then the court may continue the matter, if necessary, and advise the defendant that if new counsel does not enter an appearance by the next scheduled trial date, the case will proceed to trial with the defendant unrepresented.
*463This rule is logical only if the defendant has the ability to obtain new representation. If the defendant lacks that ability because of indigency, the rule not only becomes illogical, but unconstitutional as well.
Although adopted by the Court of Appeals, the rule certainly was not designed to mandate that an indigent defendant who happened to have a meritorious reason for requesting dismissal of his counsel, would, upon discharge of counsel by the court, be totally responsible to retain new counsel. In the same vein, the very provisions the majority hold must be followed, i.e., Rule 4-215(a)(l)-(4) (that of making certain the defendant has received a copy of the charging document and is made aware of the importance of assistance of counsel), are utterly superfluous.
While designing the rule to apply to non-indigent defendants, for the most part, the Court of Appeals likely assumed that if an indigent defendant who was represented by the Public Defender’s Office had a meritorious reason for discharging his attorney, that office would appoint a new attorney.
In this case, once Mr. Miller was meritoriously discharged, the Public Defender should have appointed a new attorney. The Public Defender chose not to do so. This left the defendant without an attorney and, because he was indigent, unable to procure one.
Md.Rule 4-215(e) simply does not address the situation presented in this case. I submit that the solution to this problem has been provided by the Legislature in Art. 27A, § 6(f). That statute reads as follows:
Nothing in this article shall be construed to deprive any court mentioned in § 4(b)(2) of this article of its authority to appoint an attorney to represent an indigent person where there is a conflict in legal representation in a matter involving multiple defendants and one of the defendants is represented by or through the Office of the Public Defender, or where the Office of the Public De*464fender declines to provide representation to an indigent person entitled to representation under this article.
We pointed out in Baldwin v. State, 51 Md.App. 538, 553, 444 A.2d 1058 (1982), that this statute placed a responsibility on trial judges to assure that defendants are not denied their right to counsel. Thus, when the Public Defender refuses to represent an indigent defendant, a trial judge may not force the defendant to trial without first deciding whether the court should appoint counsel under Art. 27A, § 6(f). Thompson v. State, 284 Md. 113, 128, 394 A.2d 1190 (1978).
The majority distinguishes the Baldwin and Thompson cases on the grounds that in both of those cases the reason for the Public Defender’s refusal to represent the defendant was that the Public Defender did not believe the defendant was indigent. I believe this is too narrow a reading of these cases. I believe that the rationale of Thompson and Baldwin should be applied in all similar situations where the Public Defender’s office has declined representation.
In the instant case therefore, I believe that after counsel was excused and the Public Defender made known his position that he was not going to represent appellant that Art. 27A, § 6(f) became applicable. Consequently, the trial judge, as a threshold matter, became responsible to conduct a hearing to decide whether the appellant was eligible as an indigent to receive the services of a court appointed attorney. The trial judge, by failing to do so in this case, denied the appellant of his right to counsel. For that reason, I would vacate the judgment and remand the case for further proceedings.

. The trial court determined that because of the conflict appellant had with his attorney over the question of whether Ms. Stacy (appellant’s former common-law wife of ten years against whom he had been convicted of committing a fourth degree sexual offense in violation of his probation) should be subpoenaed as a witness, a discharge of counsel was proper. Although the trial judge did not employ the specific adjective “meritorious,” his comments and actions clearly amounted to such finding.