Superintendent of Md. State Reformatory for Males v. Calman

• Decision Date: 10 December 1953
• Docket Number: No. 49,49
• Parties: SUPERINTENDENT OF MARYLAND STATE REFORMATORY FOR MALES v. CALMAN.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 414

203 Md. 414

101 A.2d 207

SUPERINTENDENT OF MARYLAND STATE REFORMATORY FOR MALES v. CALMAN.

No. 49.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Dec. 10, 1953.

Ambrose T. Hartman, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Edward D. E. Rollins, Atty. Gen., and Anselm Sodaro, State's Atty., Baltimore City, Baltimore, on the brief), for appellant.

Kenneth C. Proctor, Towson, for appellee.

Before SOBELOFF, C. J., and DELAPLAINE, COLLINS, HENDERSON and HAMMOND, JJ.

SOBELOFF, Chief Judge.

We granted the application of the Superintendent of the Maryland State Reformatory for Males for leave to appeal from an order discharging the appellee on habeas corpus primarily because the case involves an important question as to the scope of the writ of habeas corpus.

In June, 1951, when he was fourteen years old, Wallace Calman was committed as a delinquent, boy to Boys' Village of Maryland, by Judge Moylan sitting in the Circuit Court of Baltimore City, Division of Juvenile Causes. The following March he ran away from Boys' Village, using no weapons or violence, and committing no offense after he left the institution. He was apprehended and indicted for the crime of escape under article 27, § 164 of the Annotated Code of Maryland (1951), jurisdiction having been waived by the Magistrate for Juvenile Causes in Prince George's County, as permitted by Article 26, § 53, 1951 Code. The applicable portion of the statute alleged to have been violated is: 'If any offender or person legally detained and confined in the Penitentiary, or Jail, or House of Correction, or Reformatory, or Station House, or any other place of confinement, in this State, shall escape, he shall, on conviction thereof by the Criminal Court of Baltimore City or by the Circuit Court of the County in which the escape takes place, be sentenced to confinement in the Penitentiary, Jail or House of Correction for such additional period, not exceeding ten years, as the Court may adjudge.' Article 27, § 164, 1951 Code.

When arraigned in the Circuit Court, Calman pleaded guilty. At a subsequent hearing he was represented by a court-appointed lawyer and convicted by the Court sitting without a jury, and sentenced to five years in the Maryland House of Correction, but on recommendation of the Court was transferred to the Maryland State Reformatory for Males. He petitioned the Baltimore City Court for a writ of habeas corpus, and after a hearing was ordered released in April, 1953, by Judges Moylan and Carter. In its opinion the Court held the appellee's conviction and sentence 'an unconstitutional deprivation of his liberty for the elementary reason that his commitment to Boys' Village did not constitute him a prisoner being detained in a penal institution in connection with a criminal matter.' In the argument of this appeal the contention was made that under Article 27, § 164, Boys' Village is not a 'place of confinement' within the meaning of the statute, as the appellant maintains it is. Briefly stated, the appellee's contention is that when the statute enumerates particular types of institutions, escape from which shall be punishable, and then adds the words 'or any other place of confinement,' these general words must be construed to embrace only places similar in nature to those specifically enumerated; that under the doctrine of ejusdem generis, when the specific enumeration does not exhaust the class, the general words which follow must be construed to amplify the class by including only those unspecified places which fall within the same genus as those specifically enumerated. Further it is urged that such a construction is all the more required because a criminal statute is to be interpreted as narrowly as the language will reasonably permit. Applying these principles of statutory interpretation, it is maintained that Boys' Village is not one of the places escape from which is made a criminal offense and the commitment is an utter nullity, from which the appellee is entitled to relief on habeas corpus.

The appellant, however, insists that Boys' Village falls within the description 'reformatory', or at least is within the same genus as 'reformatory' and thus clearly falls within the meaning of the phrase 'any other place of confinement', and that the whole statutory scheme indicates a legislative intent that Boys' Village be considered a place of confinement within the meaning of the section. Both sides seek to gather support for their respective contentions by referring to the Juvenile Court law, Article 26, §§ 50-70, 1951 Code, and the history of Boys' Village and similar institutions. Roth v. House of Refuge, 31 Md. 329.

At the threshold of our consideration of the case, before we reach the question of the correct interpretation of Article 27, § 164, is the problem whether such a question as that raised by the appellee may properly be considered on habeas corpus.

The scope of habeas corpus is not the same in all states. Differences have arisen through variant statutory and other historic developments, affected in some instances by the existence or non-existence in these jurisdictions of remedies by way of appeal or otherwise for the correction of alleged errors resulting in convictions.

The Court has undertaken in a recent per curiam opinion a comprehensive statement of the proper scope of habeas corpus in reviewing the detention of sentenced prisoners. Loughran v. Warden, 192 Md. 719, 64 A.2d 712, 713, certiorari denied sub nom. Loughran v. Maryland, 337 U.S. 908, 69 S.Ct. 1040, 93 L.Ed. 1721. The petitioner in that case, in prison under a sentence for 'larceny after trust', urged that his inability to refund a deposit on a house did not constitute a crime but involved only a 'civil controversy'; that there was no competent evidence to show any crime; that the statute under which he was convicted did not cover his acts, and if it did it was void because violative of the constitutional prohibition against imprisonment for debt, Maryland Const. Article 3, § 38, and that the statute was void because too 'vaguely worded' to define a crime, and consequently the indictment, trial and sentence were all a nullity. The petitioner therefore sought to be discharged on habeas corpus. He was remanded, and on appeal this Court said. 'Habeas corpus cannot serve the purpose of a demurrer to an indictment. Dimmick v. Tompkins, 194 U.S. 540, 552, 24 S.Ct. 780, 48 L.Ed. 1110; cf. Hickman v. Brady, 188 Md. 103, 53 A.2d 72. We express no opinion as to the construction of the Act of 1945. * * * This Court has always held that habeas corpus is not a proper remedy when the remedy by appeal is or was available and the judgment is not a nullity. We see no reason for not adhering to this rule in cases of conviction under an unconstitutional statute in a superior court of general jurisdiction. In the instant case any question as to the constitutionality of the Act of 1945 could have been just as easily raised and as fully and effectively heard and decided in the Criminal Court as any other question of law or fact in the course of the trial, and would have been subject to review on motion for a new trial and on appeal, and is not subject to review on habeas corpus.'

It is to be noted that Calman did not in the trial court and does not here actually put in question the constitutionality of Article 27, § 164, but in essence the issue he raises is only whether the facts shown meet the requirements of that section.

Shortly after the Loughran case, Winegard v. Warden, 194 Md. 699, 69 A.2d 685, 686, certiorari denied 339 U.S. 938, 70 S.Ct. 670, 94 L.Ed. 1355, came before the Court. The point on which petitioner there relied was that the statute was unconstitutional because it was claimed that it permits cruel and unusual punishment. This is not the point raised here, but the language of the Court in disposing of the contention is applicable here. The per curiam opinion of the Court said: 'A judgment of a superior court of general jurisdiction, which has power to decide all questions involved in a case before it, including constitutional questions and questions as to its own jurisdiction, is not a nullity. In Maryland habeas corpus is not a proper remedy when a remedy by appeal is or was available and the judgment is not a nullity.'

Still more recently Judge Henderson had occasion to say for this Court in State ex rel. Tabor v. Swenson, 195 Md. 710, 72 A.2d 684: '* * * In addition to the grounds discussed in the previous application, he now contends that the 'statutory burglary laws of Maryland' are so vague, ambiguous and uncertain as to be unconstitutional and that the indictment was not in conformity with the statutes or common law. It is sufficient to state that such questions cannot be reviewed on habeas corpus.'

Judge Markell in a recent article published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 101, page 1154, discusses fully the proper function of the writ of habeas corpus in Maryland when resorted to by sentenced prisoners who complain of irregularities in the trial, or invalidity of the indictment, or the unconstitutionality of the statute upon which the indictment was based. He points out that the review of convictions is limited to exceptional cases in which violation of fundamental rights has occurred, and the writ of habeas corpus is the only effective means of preserving such rights, as where such unfairness has entered the trial proceedings as to cause the court to 'lose its jurisdiction', Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 468, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 82 L.Ed. 1461. Illustrative of this principle are cases where the traverser was denied counsel, or where an appeal was prevented by the officials, or where pleas of guilty, waiver of counsel or jury trial were obtained by coercion, Smith v. O'Grady, 312 U.S. 329, 61 S.Ct. 572, 85 L.Ed. 859; Waley v. Johnston, 316 U.S. 101, 62 S.Ct. 964, 86 L.Ed. 1302; Williams v. Kaiser, 323 U.S. 471, 65 S.Ct. 363, 89 L.Ed. 398; Marino v. Ragen, ...