In re Darrin M.

COUCH, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. On March 7,1979, at a hearing in Cases Nos. JA 639-79 and 640-79 in the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County, sitting as a juvenile court, Darrin M., the appellant, a seventeen year old male who was alleged to have participated in two daytime housebreakings, was waived to the jurisdiction of the criminal court. Pursuant to Section 3-817 (g) of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article only a summary review was made of the waiver petitions since the court, on December 14, 1978, had waived jurisdiction of the appellant to the criminal court on similar but unrelated charges. On appeal the appellant contends that a summary review was improper because the December 14,1978 waiver of the appellant was still on appeal at that time to this Court.

Section 3-817 (g) of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article states: “If the court has once waived its jurisdiction with respect to a child in accordance with this section, and that child is subsequently brought before the court on another charge of delinquency, the court may waive its jurisdiction in the subsequent proceeding after summary review.” 1 In granting the waivers in 639-79 and 640-79, the court noted: “The record should reflect I have just been handed the investigative report filed for waiver of this child in JA 3671-78, and 3672-78, one was a burglary and one was larceny from a coin machine, presented to ³⁸¹ the Court back in November of 1978. As I understand, that waiver was granted by myself.” and thereafter concluded: “December 14 waiver was granted in 3671 and 3672-78. All right. The Court, pursuant to 3-817 (g), will now, summarily waive in 639-79 and 640-79.” The appellant contends that a summary review of the petitions in the instant case was improper because the prior waiver was still on appeal and therefore not final.

The appellant’s point is well taken since this Court in an unreported per curiam opinion, In Re: Darrin M., No. 52, September Term, 1979, filed on October 2,1979, remanded for further proceedings because we found the December 14,1978 waiver of the appellant defective. Thus there was no effective previous waiver of juvenile jurisdiction so as to bring Sec. 3-817 (g) into play. In our view, a review of the legislative history of Sec. 3-817, Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article of the Maryland Code, points the way to our conclusion. In 1973 the legislature amended subsection (c) of Article 26, Section 70-16 of the Code to provide that an order waiving juvenile jurisdiction was interlocutory and, of course, any appeal therefrom would have to await a conviction in the adult court.

This was changed by the legislature in 1975 when it was specifically provided, in subsection (f) of Sec. 3-817, that such an order was immediately appealable. In the next subsection following, provision was made for summary review where the court had once waived its jurisdiction with respect to a child in accordance with this section, i.e., Sec. 3-817. It seems patent, therefore, that when this change is kept in mind it follows that a predicate for utilizing the summary review procedure allowed by Sec. 3-817 (g) requires that there be no appeal pending from the previous order. While neither this Court nor the Court of Appeals has been faced with this precise issue before, we believe our conclusion is supported by