Stallard v. State

Per Curiam. In this appeal, it is contended that the trial judge abused his discretion (1) in denying the appellant’s motion for a continuance; (2) in refusing to disqualify himself; and (3) in denying appellant’s motion for a new trial. The appellant was charged with storehouse breaking and allied counts in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County. Immediately after his case was called for trial, his attorney made an oral motion for a continuance on the grounds (1) that the assignment of cases is controlled by the State’s Attorney (which ground he does not press in this Court); (2) that he learned just before trial that the appellant was a narcotics addict and that, accordingly, he needed additional time properly to prepare his defense.

In this Court it is argued that since the modern trend in legal thinking tends to view drug and alcoholic addiction as an illness, his attorney should have been afforded additional time to explore avenues of possible defenses which might have been available to the drug addicted appellant. The granting of a continuance, as the appellant recognizes, is within the sound discretion of the court. Johnson v. State, 237 Md. 283, 288 ; Walter v. State, 4 Md. App. 373, 376 . The exercise of that discretion will not be disturbed by this Court unless clearly abused.

Walter v. State, supra, 377; Bright v. ⁵⁶² State, 1 Md. App. 657, 662 . While we recognize that the requested continuance may have been desired by the appellant, we are also aware that the orderly administration of the courts requires that cases be disposed of with reasonable dispatch. Here the appellant had been charged with the commission of a crime that occurred nearly a year prior to trial. He had been indicted for some seven months; he was represented by counsel for at least two months before trial; and he had already been granted one continuance.

Under these circumstances we cannot say that the lower court clearly abused its discretion in denying the continuance. After the jury had been sworn, but before any evidence had been presented, the appellant’s trial counsel requested the trial judge (out of the presence of the jury) to disqualify himself because he had presided at a jury trial approximately one year before in which the appellant had been found guilty of a similar crime and that the same Assistant State’s Attorney had prosecuted the case. It is argued that at the previous trial the appellant’s prior criminal record and drug addiction were disclosed and that the record indicates that the trial judge had an accurate recollection of the trial. We are of the opinion that our holding in Day v. State, 2 Md. App. 334 , is dispositive of the appellant’s contention in this regard.

There, we held that in the absence of a showing of bias or prejudice, a judge, on the retrial of a jury case, is not disqualified from trying the case merely because he presided at the original trial.