Blaney v. State

McSherry", J., delivered the opinion of the Court. William Blaney was indicted by the grand jury of Baltimore City for the murder of his aunt, and upon his ¹⁵⁴ arraignment he interposed the following motion called in the record a plea in abatement, viz., “The defendant, William Blaney, by his counsel, N. Winslow Williams, hereby moves that the indictment be quashed for the following reasons: 1st. It appears upon the face of the record that the grand jury was without jurisdiction to find the same. 2nd. The said indictment is not based upon an accusation made before a committing magistrate, nor was said case given in charge to the grand jury by the Court'or State’s Attorney. 3rd.

The said indictment is not based upon a presentment by the grand jury made upon the personal knowledge or observation of its members, or upon the testimony of witnesses sent to it by the Court or State’s Attorney. 4th. The offence charged in said indictment is not of such a character or. of such public notoriety as to require or warrant an extraordinary original investigation and presentment by the grand jury. 5th. The preliminary hearing, coroner’s inquest and commitment upon which such indictment was intended and supposed to be based, were held and had entirely on Sunday, without necessity or warrant, and were therefore void and of no effect.” To this plea the State demurred, and the demurrer being sustained by the Court, the accused then pleaded not guilty, and was put upon his trial which resulted in his being convicted of murder in the first degree. After sentence of death had been passed upon him he filed a petition in the Criminal Court asking that the record be removed to this Court as upon writ of error.

The error assigned is the ruling of the Criminal Court in sustaining the demurrer to the plea in abatement. The record shows that the coroner committed the accused to jail on Sunday, May the fourth, 1890. That the warden of the city jail on the following day transmitted to the Criminal Court a copy of the coroner’s commitment, and a list of witnesses appended thereto, and ¹⁵⁵ that two days later, the grand jury having heard the witnesses, returned the commitment into Court endorsed “presentment," which endorsement was signed hy the foreman. On the tenth of May, the indictment now before us was returned in due form hy the grand jury.

It is this indictment which the accused alleges the grand jury were without jurisdiction to find. The theory upon which the plea is founded rests upon an entire misconception of the scope and extent of the powers and the jurisdiction of a grand jury in Maryland. The plea assumes that a grand jury are without authority to indict (except in a few unimportant cases) unless upon the personal knowledge or observation of the members thereof, or unless the matter be given them in charge by the Court, or he laid before them hy the State's Attorney, or the accusation be first made before a committing magistrate. This view, whilst adopted and acted on in the some of the States, has never prevailed in Maryland, at least since the Revolution.

It denies the grand jury all inquisitorial power — one of their most important functions — and limits them to the investigation only of cases laid before them, or falling under their personal knowledge or observation. It prohibits them from originating a prosecution though the ends of justice might he absolutely defeated by the publicity incident to the taking of initiatory steps before a magistrate. It circumscribes the sphere of their usefulness, and in a large measure deprives them of most efficient means to bring the lawless and the vicious to speedy trial and punishment. That grand juries may on their own motion institute all prosecutions whatever is a view which was generally accepted at the institution of the Federal government, and was in accordance with the English practice then obtaining.

Wharton’s Crim. Pl. & Prac., sec. 334; Ford