Queen v. State

Pearce, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The appellants in.this case were charged with an assault and battery upon Charles C. Fisher and others in Anne Arundel county, and were brought before John N. Davis, Elsq., a justice of the peace of that county under a warrant issued by him. Doth the state’s attorney for Anne Arundel county, .and the appellants waived the right of jury trial. Upon trial they were all adjudged to be guilty and were sentenced to he confined in the Maryland House of Correction for varying periods, and they each appealed from this judgment of the justice of the peace to the Circuit Court for Anno Arundel County.

When the case was called for trial in that Court, the defendants moved the Court to reverse the judgment and quash the warrant in the case because, as they alleged, the justice had no jurisdiction to hear and determine the case or to render judgment in the same. This motion was overruled by the Court and the defendants were again adjudged to be guilty and were sentenced to be confined in the Maryland House of Correction for the same periods respectively for which they had been sentenced by the justice, and from that judgment they have appealed to this Court. The record contains what is called a bill of exceptions signed and sealed by the Judge before whom the case was heard, and it sets forth the motion made to quash the warrant with the reasons therefor, and states that the Stale’s attorney for Anne Arundel county admitted that the offence was committed in the First Precinct of the Second Election District of Anne Arundel County, and that John AT. Davis, the justice who heard the case below, was not the police justice of the First Precinct of said Election District.

The contention of the appellants is that under the local law of Anne Arundel county, as amended by Chapter 524 of the Acts of 1908, the police justice of the Second Election District has exclusive jurisdiction of all criminal offences ⁶⁸⁰ committed in the First Precinct of that district, and that Justice Davis not being such police justice, had no jurisdiction to hear and determine the case. But even if this should be conceded, the judgment in this case could not be reversed, because it is firmly established by the decisions of this Court that wherever the statute gives an appeal from a judgment of the justice of the peace to the Circuit Court, the judgment of the Circuit Court is final and conclusive, and there is no appeal to this Court, whether the justice had jurisdiction or not, unless the statute gives an appeal to this Court from the judgment of the Circuit Court. It was so held in Rayner v. State, 52 Md. 373. In that ease Judge Alvey said: “It is only where the Circuit Court has proceeded without right or jurisdiction to hear and decide the case that an appeal or writ of error may be taken to this Court to reverse a judgment that is unwarrantably rendered: But here” (as in the case before us now) “the statute under which the proceedings were taken, by express terms, gave the right of appeal from the judgment of the justice to the Circuit Court, without giving any right of appeal to this Court. * * * Having invoked that jurisdiction and submitted himself to it, and the case having been regularly tried, he has no redress by an appeal or writ of error to this Court.

If the Circuit Court had power and jurisdiction under the appeal taken, to revise and reverse the judgment of the justice, either for the want of jurisdiction in the justice, or upon other grounds, it had right and jurisdiction to affirm the judgment of the justice, and that judgment of affirmance must he talcen as final and .conclusive, as the judgment of reversal mould have been, if