Jackson-El v. State

Moylan, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The profusion of alarm systems — state and federal, statutory and constitutional — prodding, measuring and ⁶⁷⁹ sometimes short-circuiting the progress of investigation and trial provides a veritable tintinnabulation of the bells. Constitutional due process may ring the bell on inordinate pre-charging delay and post-verdict delays. The filing of charges, moreover, may not timely make it under the wire according to various statutes of limitations.

There is the statutory alarm clock regulating interstate detainers. There is yet a different statutory alarm clock regulating intrastate detainers. There is the constitutional speedy trial limitation provided both by the Sixth Amendment of the Federal Constitution and Article 21 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights. There is an additional statutory alarm provided by Art. 27, § 591, and implemented by Md. Rule 746.

Within this cacophony, Md. Rule 1085 — limiting our power of review to those questions actually presented to the trial court — still abides, even as it does not with respect to all other issues. To direct the trial judge to harken to the ringing of a single bell is not to invite judicial appraisal of the entire belfry. In reviewing a decision below, we must ask, with John Donne, not simply for whom the bell tolls but also which bell is tolling. The appellant, James Jackson-El, the Younger, was convicted by a Baltimore City jury, presided over by Judge David Ross, of murder in the second degree.

At the trial stage, specifically upon his motion of July 3, 1979, he claimed that time had run out on the State because Md. Rule 746, then requiring that an accused be tried within 120 days "after the appearance or waiver of counsel or after the appearance of defendant before the court pursuant to Rule 723, 1 ’ was ringing. State v. Hicks, 285 Md. 310 , 403 A.2d 356 , had just been decided as of June 25, 1979, and provided that the dismissal of the indictment was the appropriate remedy for a violation of Rule 746. The appellant’s motion relied exclusively on this rule of court, and at the hearing on the motion on July 3, only this argument was made. Judge Ross ruled against the appellant on the ground that extraordinary cause for a delay beyond 120 days had been ⁶⁸⁰ shown by the State.

The merits of that ruling are now moot, for on July 19,1979, upon a motion for reconsideration of its opinion in State v. Hicks, supra, the Court of Appeals issued a per curiam supplemental note to that opinion, 285 Md. at 334 , 403 A.2d at 368 , pointing out that Hicks was to be applied only prospectively. The appellant does not now dispute the inapplicability of Hicks to his case. He now claims, rather, that time had run out on the State because a different bell was ringing — his constitutional right to a speedy trial under the Sixth Amendment. That question, however,