CHADWICK MICHAEL NALLS v. STATE OF MARYLAND;
JUSTIN ALLEN MELVIN v. STATE OF MARYLAND
Court of Appeals, Greene (Plurality)
Jury Trial Waiver- Contemporaneous objection is now required to preserve for appeal a trial judge’s failure to announce “knowing and voluntary” waiver
This opinion, like Morgan, represents yet another step back from the strict policy of reversal required by Valonis.
Valonis was a 5-2 decision authored by J. Greene that post-dated the trials of Nalls, Melvin, and Szwed.
The Valonis court issued a new rule mandating reversal if the trial judge failed to announce on the record their finding that the waiver was both “knowing” and “voluntary.” The Court suggested in that opinion that contemporaneous objection was not required and therefore all such convictions were subject to reversal.
The importance of Szwed and the instance cases is that the entire Court of Appeals (except CJ Battaglia) now agrees that a contemporaneous objection is henceforth required in order to preserve the issue for appeal.
Despite closing the door on all other cases where there was no objection at trial, the plurality for some reason still chose not to find waiver in these three. J. Watts does an excellent job in her dissent in Nalls highlighting the needless nature of the Court’s exercise of discretion in these cases.
The Court’s concern was that “[d]espite this Court’s clear stance regarding compliance, challenges under the Rule persist.” To rectify this, apparently, they chose three cases that PRE-DATED Valonis and reversed them. Nalls was convicted of raping his sister’s sleeping roommate, Sczwed was convicted of 1st degree burglary, and Melvin was convicted of theft.
Szwed was a 3-1-3 decision authored by J. Greene (plurality Greene, Barbera, Harrell — concurring Battaglia– dissenting Adkins, McDonald and Raker) that reversed based on the court’s statement at the end of the waiver colloquy that
“I’m going to find that he made a free and voluntary election of a court trial versus a jury trial.”
Because the “knowing” prong wasn’t addressed, reversal was required. The transcript clearly demonstrated that the waiver was both knowing and voluntary.
The joined cases of Nalls and Melvin resulted in a 3-1-2-1 decision authored by J. Greene (plurality Greene, Barbera, Harrell — concurring Battaglia– dissenting McDonald and Adkins — dissenting Watts) reversing Nalls based on the court’s statement
“Then I am satisfied, sir, that you have waived your right to have a jury trial and you’re going to have a court trial”
thus failing to address the “knowing” and “voluntary” issues. The transcript clearly demonstrated that the waiver was both knowing and voluntary.
Reversing in Melvin based on the court’s statement
“I’m satisfied that you knowingly, intelligently waived your right for a jury trial.”
failing to address the “voluntary” prong. The transcript demonstrated that the waiver was both knowing and voluntary.
Important to J. Greene is noting that there are no “magic words” — judges are free to use synonyms or “words other than ‘knowingly’ and ‘voluntarily’ that capture the concepts of the words used in the Rule can achieve compliance, so long as both concepts are represented.”
J. Greene does not explain how precise these “words that aren’t synonyms but nonetheless ‘represent’ the concepts” must be, but caution should doubtless be exercised in the use of metaphor that goes too far afield.