Thomas v. State, 182

• Citation: 320 A.2d 538,21 Md.App. 572
• Decision Date: 13 June 1974
• Docket Number: No. 182,182
• Parties: Calvin Edward THOMAS v. STATE of Maryland.
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

Page 572

21 Md.App. 572

320 A.2d 538

Calvin Edward THOMAS v. STATE of Maryland.

No. 182.

Court of Special Appeals of Maryland.

June 13, 1974.

Certiorari Denied Sept. 11, 1974.

John W. Sause, Jr., Dist. Public Defender, Centreville, with whom was Floyd L. Parks, Chestertown, on the brief, for appellant.

Gilbert Rosenthal, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom were Francis B. Burch, Atty. Gen., and Richard R. Cooper, State's Atty., for Kent County, on the brief, for appellee.

Argued before MORTON, MOYLAN and GILBERT, JJ.

GILBERT, Judge.

On March 29, 1974 the appellant, Calvin Edward Thomas, a fifteen year old, appeared at the trial of Larry Anthony Moody. Moody was charged with the robbery and larceny of a watch. Appellant faced the identical charges in the same court because the juvenile court had waived jurisdiction over him on December 20, 1973, although the appellant's case before the Circuit Court had not come on for trial inasmuch as he had entered an appeal to this Court from the waiver order. ¹

We have attached to this opinion Appendix A, which is part of the transcript of both the Moody trial and the appellant's subsequent contempt hearing. It would be superfluous to set forth in the text of this opinion the divers acts of the appellant that led to the contempt citation. Suffice it to say that the conduct of appellant, as reflected by Appendix A, leads to the inescapable conclusion that appellant so conducted himself as to demean the orderly administration of justice, depicted his contempt for the Circuit Court for Kent County, was rude, discourteous, disrespectful, disruptive, defiant and irascible even after being warned by Judge George B. Rasin that if appellant persisted he would be cited for contempt. The appellant did persist, was cited, adjudged guilty and sentenced to 179 days in the County Jail. Judge Rasin, at the outset of the contempt proceeding, stated that he thought an 'appropriate punishment' to be 'some deprivation of . . . freedom, for some period of time that would be less than 6 months, which would not require a jury trial.' ²

In Roll v. State, supra at 48, 288 A.2d at 614, we said:

'As direct contempts are those which occur in the presence of the court or so near to the court as to interrupt its proceedings, the judge is usually an observer of or has personal knowledge of the facts.' ³

Augustine Birrell, In the Name of Bodleian: Contempt of Court, wrote:

'An ill-disposed person may exhibit contempt of court in divers ways-for example, he may scandalize the court itself, which may be done not merely by the extreme measure of hurling missiles at the presiding judge, or loudly contemning his learning or authority, but by ostentatiously reading a newspaper in his presence, or laughing uproariously at a joke made by someone else. Such contempts, committed as they are in facie curiae, are criminal offences, and may be punished summarily by immediate imprisonment without the right of appeal. ⁴

It speaks well both for the great good sense of the judges and for the deeprooted legal instincts of our people that such offenses are seldom heard of. It would be impossible nicely to define what measure of freedom of manners should be allowed in a court of justice, which, as we know, is neither a church nor a theatre, but, as a matter of practice, the happy mean between an awestruck and unmanly silence and free-and-easy conversation is well preserved.'

Without attempting to define the 'measure of freedom of manners . . . allowed in a court of justice', we think it indubitable that reasonable men would agree that appellant's conduct during the Moody trial was contemptuous, and that appellant carred such conduct forward into his own contempt hearing. Appellant's contention that his 'gestures were merely to get the attention of the Court so that he might testify; and his hostility was simply based upon an inner attitude toward a system which he felt was prejudicial' ⁵ does not excuse him from patently disdainful conduct. We find no merit in appellant's assertion that 'there is no factual support for the finding of contempt.'

An outcrop of appellant's contemptuous conduct poses an additional question of whether a juvenile who commits a direct contempt of a Circuit Court can be summarily adjudged in contempt or must be referred to a juvenile court for a waiver or delinquency hearing.

By Laws 1969, Ch. 432, § 2, ⁶ the General Assembly set forth the legislative purpose of 'Juvenile Causes'. Those purposes are: '(1) To provide for the care, protection and wholesome mental and physical development of children coming within the provisions of this subtitle;

(2) To remove from children committing delinquent acts the taint of criminality and the consequences of criminal behavior, and to substitute therefor a program of treatment, training, and rehabilitation consistent with the protection of the public interest;

(3) To place a child in a wholesome family environment whenever possible;

(4) To separate a child from his parents only when necessary for his welfare or in the interest of public safety;

(5) To provide judicial procedures for carrying out the provisions of this subtitle.

This subtitle shall be liberally construed to effectuate these purposes.'

This Court in the case of In Re Hamill, 10 Md.App. 586, at 590-591, 271 A.2d 762, at 764 (1970), in commenting upon the purpose of the Act said:

'. . . (T)he Legislature intended no departure in philosophy from that underlying previous juvenile court enactments in Maryland, as interpreted by the Court of Appeals, viz., that juvenile proceedings are of a special nature designed to meet the problems peculiar to the adolescent (In Re Fletcher, 251 Md. 520 (, 248 A.2d 364 (1968))); that the proceedings of a juvenile court are not criminal in nature and its dispositions are not punishments for crime (In the Matter of Cromwell, 232 Md. 409 (, 194 A.2d 88 (1963))); that the juvenile law has as its underlying concept the protection of the juvenile, so that judges, in making dispositions in juvenile cases, think not in terms of guilt, but of the child's need for protection or rehabilitation (In re Johnson, 254 Md. 517 (, 255 A.2d 419 (1969))); that the juvenile act does not contemplate the punishment of children where they are found to be delinquent, but rather an attempt to correct and rehabilitate them in 'a wholesome family environment whenever possible,' although rehabilitation may have to be sought in some instances in an institution (Moquin v. State, 216 Md. 524 (, 140 A.2d 914 (1958))).'

See also In Re Arnold, 12 Md.App. 384, 278 A.2d 658 (1971).

Courts Art., § 1-501 provides that:

'. . . Each (Circuit Court) has full common-law and equity powers and jurisdiction in all civil and criminal cases within its county, and all the additional powers and jurisdiction conferred by the Constitution and by law, except where by law jurisdiction has been limited or conferred exclusively upon another tribunal.'

By § 3-804 of the Courts Art. it is further, in pertinent part, provided:

'(a) The (juvenile) court has exclusive original jurisdiction over a child alleged to be:

(1) Delinquent;

(2) Dependent;

(3) Neglected;

(4) In need of supervision; or

(5) Mentally handicapped.'

In his argument to this Court, appellant contends that the above quoted provisions of the Courts Article and Hamill, demonstrate that juvenile courts have exclusive jurisdiction over persons under the age of 18 years who commit an act that would be a crime if committed by an adult, and, inasmuch as direct contempt, if committed by an adult would be a crime, the appellant, a juvenile, must be proceeded against in a juvenile court. We do not share that view.

Courts Art. § 1-202 provides:

'(a) Exercise of power-A court may exercise the power to punish for contempt of court or to compel compliance with its commands in the manner prescribed by the Maryland Rules or Maryland District Rules.' ⁷

The Maryland Rule concerned with the procedure for punishment of direct contempt is P3(a). That Rule states:

'a. Summary Punishment:

A direct contempt may be punished summarily by the court against which the contempt was committed.'

The fundamental reason why a court possesses the power to punish for contempt is not to protect the personage of the judge from real or imagined injury to his pride or dignity, but to assure the proper conduct of the orderly administration of justice over which the judge has been designated to preside. Helmore v. Smith, 35 Ch.D. 449, 455 (1887). If we were to adopt appellant's point of view that Judge Rasin had no authority to dispose summarily of the in facie curiae contempt by a juvenile, we would erode the authority of the judge to conduct court proceedings in an orderly manner, strip a trial court of its right to deal with contemptous, disruptive juvenile witnesses, render nugatory Md. Rule P3(a) in its application to juveniles and throw open wide the door to conduct creating chaotic courtroom conditions. We think the Legislature, in the adoption of the 'Juvenile Causes Act', never intended to deprive the courts of their authority to punish for direct contempt, those who commit such an act, be they juvenile or adult.

We hold that Courts Art. § 3-804(a) conferring exclusive original jurisdiction over a juvenile is inapplicable to a case of direct contempt committed in another court and that the court in which the contempt occurs possesses full power to deal with the contemptuous juvenile in the same manner as it would any adult person who had committed a similar offense. Apparently only four other jurisdictions having statutes conferring 'exclusive jurisdiction' over juveniles upon the juvenile court, have been confronted with the question of whether a juvenile may be punished for direct contempt by the court in which the contempt is committed. Bryant v. State, 256 Ind. 587, 271 N.E.2d 127 (1971), In Re Williams, 306 F.Supp. 617 (D.D.C. 1969), Application of Balucan, 44...