Clipper v. State

• Decision Date: 04 February 1983
• Docket Number: No. 145,145
• Citation: 455 A.2d 973,295 Md. 303
• Parties: Harold Lee CLIPPER v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 303

295 Md. 303

455 A.2d 973

Harold Lee CLIPPER v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 145.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Feb. 4, 1983.

Gary S. Offutt, Asst. Public Defender, Baltimore (Alan H. Murrell, Public Defender, Baltimore, on brief), for appellant.

Ann E. Singleton, Asst. Atty. Gen., Baltimore (Stephen H. Sachs, Atty. Gen., Baltimore, on brief), for appellee.

Argued before MURPHY, C.J., and SMITH, ELDRIDGE, COLE, DAVIDSON, RODOWSKY and COUCH, JJ.

COLE, Judge.

The primary question we shall decide in this case is whether a notification served on the head of an institution in which a prisoner is serving a sentence, advising that the prisoner is wanted in another jurisdiction to face an allegation that he has violated his probation falls within the purview of the Interstate Agreement on Detainers.

Because of the legal nature of this issue, the facts can be recounted succinctly. Harold Lee Clipper was tried by a jury in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County and found guilty of resisting arrest. The trial court suspended the imposition of sentence and placed Clipper on supervised probation for two years, dating from March 9, 1978. The State petitioned to revoke this probation in May, 1979 alleging that Clipper had been subsequently arrested and had apparently absconded from probation supervision. A bench warrant was issued in October, 1979. In February, 1980, Clipper was incarcerated at Lorton Reformatory in Virginia pursuant to an attempted robbery conviction received in the District of Columbia. In April, 1980, he was notified that this charge had been placed against him in Montgomery County and that a detainer had been filed. In May, 1980, Clipper requested final disposition of the charge pursuant to the Interstate Agreement on Detainers.

On March 31, 1981, Clipper was released from Lorton and returned to Montgomery County. He moved to dismiss the petition to revoke probation; his motion was denied. Thereupon, the trial court held a hearing, determined that Clipper had violated the conditions of probation, and sentenced him to one year's imprisonment. Clipper appealed to the Court of Special Appeals and this Court, on its own motion, granted certiorari prior to consideration by the intermediate court.

Clipper contends that the Interstate Agreement on Detainers applies to proceedings for violation of probation and that because he was not tried on this charge within 180 days of his request for final disposition thereof, the petition must be dismissed. He maintains, in the alternative, that if the detainer agreement does not apply, the State unreasonably delayed a hearing on the petition and, therefore, it still should be dismissed. Finally, he asserts that being placed on probation constituted a sentence; therefore, the sentence of one year's imprisonment was an unconstitutional increase of punishment violating the Double Jeopardy Clause.

The Interstate Agreement on Detainers (IAD) is a compact among forty-eight states, the United States and the District of Columbia. ¹ The IAD was spawned by the extensive criticism in the literature of penology and corrections regarding the serious disadvantages the detainer system placed on prisoners. See S.Rep. No. 1356, 91st Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in 1970 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News 4864, 4866; Note, Interstate Agreement on Detainers; Defining the Federal Role, 31 Vand.L.Rev. 1017, 1019, (1978). Maryland enacted the IAD and joined the signatory states in 1965. 1965 Md. Laws ch. 627, § 1. Those portions of the statute pertinent to this appeal have remained unchanged since the initial adoption of the IAD by the Maryland Legislature and are contained in the Md.Code (1957, 1982 Repl.Vol.), Art. 27, §§ 616A-616R.

The Agreement prescribes the methods and procedures by which one jurisdiction may obtain temporary custody of an inmate imprisoned in another jurisdiction for purposes of trial on detainers based on untried indictments, informations- r complaints pending in the requesting jurisdiction. ²

The Agreement provides that a prisoner may initiate proceedings in the requesting jurisdiction by causing written notice to be served on the prosecuting officer of the appropriate jurisdiction of his request for a final disposition of any such untried indictment, information, or complaint. The prisoner sends his written notice to the official having custody of him and that official is required to forward such notice to the appropriate prosecuting officer. The Agreement requires that the prisoner be tried on the charges contained in the detainer within 180 days. ³ If the appropriate authority refuses or fails to accept temporary custody of the prisoner or fails to try him within the 180 days prescribed, then the court having jurisdiction over the charges in the detainer shall dismiss the same with prejudice. ⁴

The two basic goals sought to be achieved by the IAD are: (1) to encourage the expeditious disposition of charges; and (2) to provide cooperative procedures among member jurisdictions to facilitate such disposition. The underlying reasons for encouraging expeditious disposition of untried charges and avoiding delays thereon were noted by the Senate Judiciary Committee:

[A] prisoner who has had a detainer lodged against him is seriously disadvantaged by such action. He is in custody and therefore in no position to seek witnesses or to preserve his defense. He must often be kept in close custody and is ineligible for desirable work assignments. What is more, when detainers are filed against a prisoner he sometimes loses interest in institutional opportunities because he must serve his sentence without knowing what additional sentences may lie before him, or when, if ever, he will be in a position to employ the education and skills he may be developing. [S.Rep. No. 1356 91st Cong., 2d Sess., reprinted in 1970 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad.News 4864, 4866.]

However, it is clear that for the Agreement to become activated, there must be an untried indictment, information or complaint lodged against the prisoner evidenced by a detainer. Clipper contends that the detainer lodged against him for violation of probation is an untried complaint. We disagree.

The Agreement's specific reference to an untried complaint certainly suggests that the drafters anticipated that the prisoner would be exposed to an actual trial. Our prior decisions have indicated that a probation revocation hearing is not a trial; "the probationer is not invested with all the rights constitutionally accruing to a defendant in a criminal prosecution, and the hearing, although judicial, is not subject to all of the limitations imposed by law upon a trial leading to conviction." State v. Bryan, 284 Md. 152, 159 n. 6, 395 A.2d 475 (1978); see also Edwardsen v. State, 220 Md. 82, 88, 151 A.2d 132 (1959) (proceeding for revocation of probation is informal in character and not subject to limitations imposed by law upon the trial leading to a conviction). ⁵ Because trial and probation revocation hearings differ in such fundamental respects, it seems implausible that by the terms "untried indictment, information or complaint" the drafters intended to include charges for which the prisoner would not have to stand trial. The drafters' use of the apparently general term "complaint" is readily understood upon realizing the universal nature of the IAD. As the Tennessee court noted in Blackwell v. State, 546 S.W.2d 828, 829 (Tenn.Cr.App.1976), "some jurisdictions use the term 'complaint' in lieu of the terms 'indictment' or 'information.' " Therefore, even though the technical meaning of the term complaint might give rise to some uncertainty, its meaning becomes clear when read in context. It simply is a general term intended to refer to a charge that will require the prisoner to go to trial.

Furthermore, a closer examination of the evils the IAD was intended to address indicates that the most fundamental problem with detainers is not present in the probation revocation setting. As noted in the congressional report, the first disadvantage to a prisoner facing an untried complaint is that because he is in custody, he cannot seek witnesses or preserve his defense. In analyzing this issue, other jurisdictions have pointed to the problems inherent in this situation as the primary reasons for the IAD. For instance, in Suggs v. Hopper, 234 Ga. 242, 215 S.E.2d 246, 247 (1975), the Georgia court noted that "[t]he purpose of the statute [IAD] is to insure speedy trial on pending charges before staleness and difficulty of proof set in." This purpose would not be served by applying the IAD to the probation revocation situation, which does not involve a complex trial with its attendant dangers if delayed. The probation revocation hearing usually involves a rather limited inquiry by the trial judge, exercising his sound discretion, focusing on whether the defendant has been convicted for another offense or whether he has failed to comply with a specific condition of probation. The problems of proof, staleness of evidence, and loss of memory caused by time are factors encountered in a trial that may affect due process in criminal prosecutions, but they are not significant concerns in a probation revocation hearing. Although some of the adverse consequences experienced by the prisoner while incarcerated subject to a detainer may be similar, a situation over which this Court has no control, the prisoner's ability to receive a fair hearing by the courts in this State is largely unaffected by delaying his hearing until he is released from a foreign jurisdiction. For these reasons, we hold that a detainer based on a violation of probation is not an untried indictment, information, or complaint and is not within the speedy trial provisions of the Interstate Agreement on Detainers.

An examination of cases from other jurisdictions that have adopted the IAD indicates that this is the almost unanimous result in similar cases. This, of...