Quailes v. State

Morton, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Appellant was convicted by a jury in the Circuit Court for Dorchester County (Edmondson, J.) of assault with intent to murder and the unlawful use of a handgun in the commission of a crime. He was sentenced to a term of twenty-five years on the assault conviction and a consecutive term of ten years on the handgun conviction. He first contends in this appeal that during the impaneling of the jury the prosecutor improperly used ³⁶ peremptory challenges to exclude two black veniremen from the petit jury in violation of his federal and state constitutional rights.

The record, we shall note at the outset, does not disclose whether the striking of the two individuals left an all white jury to consider appellant’s case. Assuming the remaining jurors were white and the two black jurors were struck solely because they were black, it has been plainly stated by the United States Supreme Court and by this Court that such a use of peremptory challenges does not, in an individual case, 1 constitute a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution, Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202 (1965); Johnson v. State, 9 Md. App. 143 (1970); or Articles 21 or 24 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights; Lawrence v. State, 51 Md. App. 575 , cert. granted, 294 Md. 142 (1982). In Swain v. Alabama, supra, the Supreme Court recognized as the "essential nature” of the peremptory challenge a prosecutor’s or defendant’s right to exclude a potential juror "without reason stated, without inquiry and without being subject to the court’s control,” and concluded that striking all six black veniremen in Swain’s trial was not a denial of equal protection of the laws: "In the quest for an impartial and qualified jury, Negro and white, Protestant and Catholic, are alike subject to being challenged without cause. To subject the prosecutor’s challenge in any particular case to the demands and traditional standards of the Equal Protection Clause would entail a radical change in the nature and operation of the challenge.” Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. at 221-222 .

Article 24 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights, providing "that no man ought to be . . . deprived of his life, ³⁷ liberty or property, but by judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land,” has been construed as embodying the concept of equal treatment. Attorney General v. Waldron, 289 Md. 683, 704 (1981). While the Court of Appeals has stated that the equal protection guarantees of article 24 and the fourteenth amendment are "independent” and "capable of divergent effect,” Attorney General v. Waldron, 289 Md. at 705 , article 24 has been interpreted to be in pari materia with the fourteenth amendment, Pitsenberger v. Pitsenberger, 287 Md. 20 (1980), and fourteenth amendment decisions are "practically direct authority” for the resolution of article 24 cases. Bureau