Parrott v. State

483 A.2d 68, 301 Md. 411, 1984 Md. LEXIS 377
CourtCourt of Appeals of Maryland
DecidedNovember 2, 1984
DocketMisc. No. 3, September Term, 1984
StatusPublished
Cited by55 cases

This text of 483 A.2d 68 (Parrott v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Maryland primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Parrott v. State, 483 A.2d 68, 301 Md. 411, 1984 Md. LEXIS 377 (Md. 1984).

Opinion

PER CURIAM.

ORDER

For reasons to be stated in an opinion later to be filed, a majority of the Court concurring, it is this 10th day of July, 1984

*413 ORDERED, by the Court of Appeals of Maryland, that the State’s motion to dismiss the appeal is granted, and the appeal is hereby dismissed with costs; and it is further

ORDERED that the mandate shall issue forthwith.

RODOWSKY, Judge.

Appellant sought immediate review of an interlocutory order of removal which was entered, in literal compliance with Maryland Constitution, art. IV, § 8, at the suggestion of the State as one of the parties to a capital murder prosecution. 1 This order is not appealable prior to final judgment because it is not within the collateral order doctrine.

A grand jury in Prince George’s County indicted appellant, Robert Parrott (Parrott), for murder and other offenses. The State served notice that it was seeking the death penalty. Thereafter the prosecutor filed a suggestion of removal pursuant to art. IV, § 8. Parrott opposed removal but the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County ordered the case to be transferred to the Circuit Court for Calvert County. That same day Parrott noted an appeal to the Court of Special Appeals from the order of removal. We issued the writ of certiorari prior to consideration of the matter by the intermediate appellate court. After the State moved in this Court to dismiss the appeal we heard arguments limited to the appealability issue. We dismissed Parrott’s appeal by a per curiam order. This opinion records our reasons for that dismissal.

*414 Parrott took the position that an interlocutory appeal lies in this case for either of two reasons. First, Maryland cases view certain removal orders as within a class of orders which grant or deny an absolute constitutional right and are on that ground immediately appealable. Secondly, the issue in this case meets the collateral order exception to the final judgment rule.

The State recognized that its position of nonappealability conflicts with certain earlier cases. The State submitted, however, that later decisions which look to the collateral order doctrine had eroded the constitutional right approach to appealability and that the subject appeal fails the collateral order test.

The fundamental problem presented here is that our decisions have used at least two different analyses to determine the appealability of interlocutory orders. Where the order appealed from involved an art. IV absolute right to a removal and the particular issue presented did not involve any trial court discretion, we have said the aggrieved party could appeal immediately. In appeals noted from interlocutory orders implicating some other constitutional rights, this Court has determined appealability by referring to the collateral order doctrine, either exclusively or in conjunction with a constitutional right analysis where the two approaches produced the same result. Here the results conflict. As we did when faced with a similar conflict in Stewart v. State, 282 Md. 557, 386 A.2d 1206 (1978), we applied the collateral order doctrine in dismissing Parrott’s appeal. To explain more fully the problem and its solution requires a review of two lines of cases.

The first line of cases treats appeals in Maryland from orders dealing with removal, a subclass of appeals involving rulings on constitutional rights. In Wright v. Hamner, 5 Md. 370 (1854), this Court entertained an immediate appeal taken from a removal by the party who had opposed granting it for lack of a timely request. The opinion went directly to the merits without any discussion of appealabili *415 ty. The fact that this Court had not questioned appealability in Wright was referred to in Griffin v. Leslie, 20 Md. 15, 18-19 (1863), in which we allowed an appeal by the party seeking removal from the trial court’s refusal to do so. There we said that

[a]n order of the court overruling the application [for removal], is unlike ordinary rulings on motions, such as motions for a new trial and other motions addressed to the discretion of the court, from which there is no appeal; and unlike rulings in demurrers and other interlocutory judgments, where no appeal lies until final judgment; but the refusal of the application for removal does finally settle a constitutional right of the party, the exercise of which, when demanded, is essential to the impartial administration of justice and should not be withheld or postponed. [Id. at 19.]

An appeal in a civil case by the party who had unsuccessfully sought removal was also entertained, without discussion of appealability, in Price v. Nesbitt, 29 Md. 263 (1868).

Article IV, § 8 was amended in 1875 as to criminal prosecutions. The amended provision limited the absolute right of removal to capital cases. In other criminal cases there had to be a showing satisfactory to the trial court that prejudice in fact existed before removal would be granted. McMillan v. Stale, 68 Md. 307, 12 A. 8 (1888) was a capital case which arose under amended art. IV, § 8. Just before the twelfth juror had been accepted and sworn for the trial of a criminal case, the State’s Attorney filed a suggestion of removal which was granted, and the accused sought immediate appellate review. This Court affirmed after specifically addressing appealability by saying:

An order removing or refusing to remove a cause, civil or criminal, to another court for trial, finally adjudicates a constitutional right of the party affected by the order. And it is regarded as a judgment from which, according to the nature of the case, an appeal or writ of error may be immediately prosecuted. Wright v. Hamner, 5 Md., *416 375; ... Griffin v. Leslie, 20 Md., 15. [Id. at 308, 12 A. at 8.]

The fact that, after 1875, removal in noncapital criminal cases rested in the discretion of the trial court and was no longer an absolute right was relied upon for the- holding in Tidewater Portland Cement Co. v. State, 122 Md. 96, 98-99, 89 A. 327, 328 (1913) that a denial of removal in a misdemeanor prosecution was not immediately appealable. Similarly, we have held that an interlocutory appeal does not lie from that portion of a removal order selecting the court to which a capital case is transferred pursuant to art. IV, § 8, because the removing court exercises discretion in that selection. See Lee v. State, 161 Md. 430, 433-34, 157 A. 723, 724 (1931).

The 1875 amendment had not affected the right of each side in a civil case to obtain one removal simply by filing a suggestion of prejudice. Removal was not extinguished as an absolute right in civil cases until that aspect of removal had been held in Davidson v. Miller, 276 Md.

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Bluebook (online)
483 A.2d 68, 301 Md. 411, 1984 Md. LEXIS 377, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/parrott-v-state-md-1984.