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DELEGATE CHILD: Mr. Chairman,
Delegate Weidemeyer and I were the sub-
committee which considered this matter. We
had two questions to decide: One, should
there be a jury of less .than twelve. We con-
sidered this. In a criminal case, although
the crime might seem to the public to be a
very minor crime, to the individual who is
being tried for that crime, it frequently
means his whole career. If he has a criminal
blot or conviction against him, he is barred
from employment, and he is frequently
barred from enlistment in the armed serv-
ices. It is like a brand on his forehead
and for that reason mainly, and from our
research of the states which we considered
were states of the same stature of Mary-
land, we found that most of our states con-
tained this jury of twelve and we put it
in there that way.
The second argument against a less than
unanimous verdict was that there were so
many hung juries. Delegate Weidemeyer
has tried a few cases and I have tried a
few. In my forty years in trying cases, I
remember that I was connected with two
cases in which there was a hung jury, one
criminal and one civil. We called in and
our chairman wrote to a number of at-
torneys in Baltimore City who had tried
cases day in and day out, and they had had
the same experience.
THE CHAIRMAN: You have one-half
minute.
DELEGATE CHILD: Now the argument
is advanced for the first time that a twelve-
man jury is subject to jury tampering. It
would seem to me you can tamper with six
a whole lot better than you can tamper
with .twelve. I am against the amendment
and urge the Committee of the Whole to
vote against the amendment.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Scanlan.
DELEGATE SCANLAN: I just want to
support the amendment, to the extent that
it proposes a less than unanimous verdict.
I think Judge Child's comment about the
six-man jury may be in order and I hope
that when the question is put to the house,
it will be divided so that we can vote first
on the size of the jury and second on the
question of whether jury verdicts should be
less than unanimous.
The assembly tonight has a great op-
portunity to strike a blow for the integrity
of the jury system and the judicial process
without sacrificing any of the fundamental
liberties that we have always guaranteed
the accused. I think there are very few
people in this room who, looking at the
present statistics of prosecutions for crime,
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and successful convictions which are going
clown in relation to the total number of
prosecutions, would have to admit that the
protections we now afford the accused per-
liaps have swung the pendulum a litle too
far. We have expended the protections of
the exclusionary rules of evidence, we have
protected self-incrimination in a fashion
that was never imagined before. We have
ruled out confessions which in no real
sense of the term can be called compulsory.
I mean by compulsory, forced or coerced
confessions. We have made it much more
difficulty to have an arrest qualify as a
legal arrest. I am not quarreling with any
of these decisions. Perhaps each one of
them and the principles enunciated are re-
quired under the great provisions of the
Constitution. But on the other hand, the
public has some rights, and in requiring
less than unanimous verdict we are not
sacrificing any fundamental Anglo-Saxon
freedoms. As Senator James has pointed
out, the mother country is already on that
road.
Talk about jury tampering. It is more
to it than that. Take the civil rights cases
in the South. How many prosecutions have
failed, with obviously guilty people be-
cause one or two men held out against the
clear and overwhelming weight of the evi-
dence. Whether they held out because of
their cultural connections, and their sym-
pathies with the accused or whether they
held out because they were asked to, or
forced to, or bribed to, I am not sure. But
certainly here is an opportunity to prove
that you do have some consideration for
the right of the judicial and jury process.
I think you will forgive me once again for
quoting Justice Plolmes, but his words
sixty-five years ago are equally true today,
and perhaps they apply with much greater
force :
"There is more danger in this country
today," referring to sixty-five years ago,
"that a criminal will go free and escape
justice than that we will be subject to
tyranny." I suggest you can swing the
pendulum a little bit back in favor of the
public by voting for Judge Henderson's
amendment.
THE CHAIRMAN : Does any other dele-
gate desire to speak in opposition?
Delegate Grant.
DELEGATE GRANT: I would like to
speak in opposition to this amendment for
a very simple reason.
I do not think any five people should be
entitled to send another man to death.
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