White v. State

Marbury, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Appellant, Charles F. White, was arrested on a warrant issued by a committing magistrate of Calvert County charging him with assault upon Thawley Parks of that county. At the ¹⁹⁰ hearing before the trial magistrate, the State prayed a jury trial. At his trial in the Circuit Court for Calvert County on July 16, 1965, Judge Perry G. Bowen presiding, the appellant elected a court trial and pleaded not guilty.

He was not indicted, but was tried on the warrant issued by the committing magistrate. He was found guilty of assault and sentenced to a term of eighteen months in the Maryland House of Correction, from which judgment and sentence he has appealed. On December 12, 1964, outside a tavern in Calvert County, at approximately 11:30 p.m., the appellant spat in the face of Mr. Thawley Parks while the latter was sitting in his car. Parks left the scene of the assault in his car, and the appellant pursued him in another car forcing him to stop three times.

After returning home, Mr. Parks went to Prince Frederick and swore out a warrant for the appellant’s arrest. The appellant, White, makes the single contention that under Schowgurow v. State, 240 Md. 121 (which held that an indictment or trial by a jury whose members had been required by the Constitution of Maryland to declare a belief in God as a prerequisite to service, was invalid under the federal Constitution), the fact that the complaining witness, in order to procure the arrest warrant, and the committing magistrate and the State’s attorney, in order to qualify for office, all had to declare a belief in God, invalidates his being brought before the criminal court and his subsequent conviction. Short answers are, first, that since the decision of the Supreme Court in Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U. S. 488, 6 L. Ed. 2d 982 , on June 19, 1961, the committing magistrate and the State’s attorney (both of whom necessarily were elected or appointed after 1961) could not be required to profess a belief in God as a prerequisite to qualifying for an office of profit or trust, and similarly the complaining witness could cause a warrant to be issued without declaring that he believed in the existence of a Supreme Being; second, the record is silent as to whether the two officials on taking office or the witness in procuring the warrant in fact did or did not declare a belief in God; and, third, that if any or all of the three voluntarily did declare a belief in God obviously he exercised a constitutionally guaranteed right of religious freedom. ¹⁹¹ Committing magistrates are appointed by the Governor from among the justices of the peace, Code (1957), Art. 52, § 97 (a). Code (1957), Art. 52, §§ 1-3, specify that every justice of the peace must take and subscribe “the oaths and declarations” prescribed by the Constitution and that no person shall act as a justice of the peace before he has done so.

Article V, § 8, of the Constitution makes it the duty of the judge of a county to administer the oath of office to the person elected as that county’s State’s attorney. The offices of justice of the peace and of State’s attorney are offices of profit or trust. Art. IV, § 1, of the Constitution and Code (1957), Art. 52, §§ 1-3; Art. V, § 9, of the Constitution. Article 36 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights provides that no person otherwise competent shall be deemed incompetent as a witness on account of his religious beliefs “provided he believes in the existence of God” and that “under His dispensation” the witness will be held morally accountable for his acts and be rewarded or punished therefor in this world or the next.

Article 26 of the Declaration of Rights provides that all warrants to