Boyd v. State

• Decision Date: 01 September 1989
• Docket Number: No. 62,62
• Citation: 581 A.2d 1,321 Md. 69
• Parties: Jody Kathleen BOYD v. STATE of Maryland. ,
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 69

321 Md. 69

581 A.2d 1

Jody Kathleen BOYD v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 62, Sept. Term, 1989.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Oct. 29, 1990.

Michael R. Braudes, Asst. Public Defender (Alan H. Murrell, Public Defender, on brief), Baltimore, for petitioner.

Richard B. Rosenblatt, Asst. Atty. Gen. (J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Atty. Gen., on brief), Baltimore, for respondent.

Argued before MURPHY, C.J., ELDRIDGE, COLE, RODOWSKY, McAULIFFE and ADKINS ^*, JJ., and CHARLES E. ORTH, Jr., Associate Judge of the Court of Appeals of Maryland, retired, specially assigned.

McAULIFFE, Judge.

The question presented is whether the trial judge erred in refusing to recuse himself. The facts involve successive court trials of codefendants by the same judge. We find no error in the denial of the motion for recusal.

On 2 July 1987, Michael Boyd was shot to death in the parking lot of his apartment complex in Anne Arundel County. Four persons were accused of complicity in the murder, and of having unsuccessfully attempted to dynamite the victim's car several days earlier. The petitioner, Jody Kathleen Boyd, was accused of employing others to kill her husband, and of aiding and abetting them in the endeavor. Michael Gregory Woods was accused of actually shooting the victim, and Donald Dare was accused of being present and directly aiding Woods. James Hayes, a juvenile, was accused of aiding and abetting the murder.

The plan to kill Michael Boyd, aptly described by the Court of Special Appeals as "one of the worst kept secrets in Anne Arundel County," ¹ came to the attention of the police shortly after the murder. The four suspects were arrested, and each gave an incriminating statement. Because the State's Attorney believed that the confession of each defendant was inadmissible against the other defendants, he secured separate indictments and did not attempt to consolidate the cases for trial.

All of the cases were assigned to Judge H. Chester Goudy, Jr. for trial. Woods came to trial first. He waived his right to a jury trial, and was tried by Judge Goudy. He was found guilty of first degree murder, attempted murder (as a result of the attempt to bomb the victim's car), conspiracy with Dare to dynamite the victim's car, and the use of a handgun in the commission of a felony. This Court affirmed the convictions. Woods v. State, 315 Md. 591, 556 A.2d 236 (1989).

On the second day of Woods's three-day trial, Judge Goudy began hearing motions to suppress in the petitioner's case, and in Dare's case. At the beginning of the hearing of the motions, both defendants orally moved to have Judge Goudy recuse himself, contending that his participation in Woods's trial precluded him from hearing the motions in the codefendants' cases. Judge Goudy denied the motions, declaring his confidence in his ability to fairly hear and determine the motions on their merits. He stated that if the defendants wished to renew their motions for recusal in connection with their trials, he would consider those motions in light of facts existing at that time.

Two weeks later, as petitioner's trial was about to begin, her attorneys renewed the motion for recusal. Judge Goudy suggested that petitioner should first elect whether she would be tried by a jury or by the court, on the basis that if she elected a jury trial, there would be no conceivable grounds for recusal. Petitioner declined to make an election until the judge ruled on her motion. After considering additional proffers and arguments of counsel, Judge Goudy denied the motion for recusal. The petitioner then waived her right to be tried by jury, and the waiver was accepted by the court. Judge Goudy declared a brief recess, and upon his return to the bench, announced that he had read all the cases on recusal given him by counsel and had re-evaluated his ability to try the case. He then said he was convinced he "could use the proper test and be impartial in the matter."

Petitioner was found guilty of murder in the first degree, attempted murder, and conspiring with Woods and Dare to dynamite her husband's car. She was sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole on the murder conviction, and was given concurrent life sentences on the remaining convictions. ² She appealed to the Court of Special Appeals, and that Court affirmed the convictions. Boyd v. State, 79 Md.App. 53, 555 A.2d 535 (1989). We granted certiorari to consider whether the trial judge erred in denying the request for recusal.

The traditional common law rule was that disqualification for bias or prejudice was not permitted. Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Lavoie, 475 U.S. 813, 820, 106 S.Ct. 1580, 89 L.Ed.2d 823 (1986). Moreover, constitutionally based claims, suggesting that failure to disqualify may result in a denial of due process, are successful "only in the most extreme of cases." Id. at 821, 106 S.Ct. at 1585.

Although the rigors of the common law rule have been relaxed, this Court has acknowledged that trial judges necessarily enjoy a broad range of discretion in ruling on motions for recusal when there is no constitutional or statutory disqualification.

There may be, and doubtless are, many circumstances in which a delicate sense of propriety would, and probably should, induce a judge to decline to sit in a given case and, upon his own motion or upon motion of either of the parties, remove the cause to another jurisdiction or request some other judge of the same jurisdiction to preside at the trial. However, if the presiding judge, under such circumstances, refuses to do this, he is within his legal rights; and his action in that respect is not the subject of review. Where the alleged disqualification does not amount to a constitutional or legal disqualification, the question is left to the enlightened conscience, delicacy of feeling, and sense of fairness possessed by the individual judge. The long and honorable history of the judiciary of this state impels the belief that the decision of such questions can be safely left where the responsibility now reposes. Judges are selected to be useful public servants, and no judge's view of the proprieties in such questions should be carried to such an extent as would result in the serious curtailment of his usefulness as a public officer.

Ex Parte Bowles, 164 Md. 318, 326, 165 A. 169 (1933).

More recently, the rules of disqualification have been established by statute or by rule of court. In the case before us, petitioner relies upon Canon 3C of the Maryland Code of Judicial Conduct, Maryland Rule 1231, which provides in pertinent part that:

(1) A judge should not participate in a proceeding in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned, including but not limited to instances where:

(a) the judge has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party, or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding; ...

In Doering v. Fader, 316 Md. 351, 558 A.2d 733 (1989), we held that the trial judge was not disqualified from hearing a sentencing proceeding in a capital punishment case simply because he had presided at an earlier trial and sentencing proceeding in the same case, and had formed and expressed an opinion concerning the propriety of a death sentence under the circumstances of that case. We quoted from the leading Supreme Court case on the subject, as follows:

The alleged bias and prejudice to be disqualifying must stem from an extrajudicial source and result in an opinion on the merits on some basis other than what the judge learned from his participation in the case.

United States v. Grinnell Corp., 384 U.S. 563, 583, 86 S.Ct. 1698, 1710, 16 L.Ed.2d 778 (1966). We acknowledged that there were occasions when information received by the trial judge would result in disqualification, 316 Md. at 357 n. 3, 558 A.2d 733, ³ but held that Doering was not such a case.

The question involved before us differs somewhat from that presented by Doering. We are here concerned with information acquired by the trial judge as a result of prior judicial proceedings involving codefendants, rather than information gained from a previous trial of the same defendant. We conclude, however, that the answer in each case is the same. The information was acquired during prior judicial proceedings, and is not, therefore, personal knowledge or bias requiring disqualification.

As we pointed out in Doering, supra, the word "personal" as used in Canon 3C means knowledge acquired from extrajudicial sources. Id. at 355-57, 558 A.2d 733. Federal courts, interpreting a statute similar in content to Canon 3C, ⁴ draw the same distinction. In Craven v. United States, 22 F.2d 605, 607-08 (1st Cir.1927), the court said:

At most, then, the affidavit charges a 'bias and prejudice,' grounded on the evidence produced in open court at the first trial, and on nothing else. We hold that such bias and prejudice (if these be appropriate terms for a well-grounded state of mind, [Berger v. United States ] 255 U.S. [22,] 42, 41 S.Ct. [230,] 236, 65 L.Ed. 481) is not personal; that it is judicial. "Personal" is in contrast with judicial; it characterizes an attitude of extra-judicial origin, derived non coram judice. "Personal" characterizes clearly the prejudgment guarded against. It is the significant word of the statute. It is the duty of a real judge to acquire views from evidence. The statute never contemplated crippling our courts by disqualifying a judge, solely on the basis of a bias (or state of mind, 255 U.S. [at] 42, 41 S.Ct. [at] 236, 65 L.Ed. 481) against wrongdoers, civil or criminal, acquired from evidence presented in the course of judicial proceedings before him. Any other construction would make the statute an intolerable obstruction to the efficient conduct of judicial proceedings, now none too speedy or effective.

More recently, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has said that "the alleged prejudice must result from an...