|
Delegate Case, do you desire to offer
your amendment AD? The Chair should
suggest that you might want to hold this
until after you see the modified amend-
ment referred to by Delegate James.
If so, we can come back to it.
DELEGATE CASE: That is exactly
what I was going to suggest, Mr. Chair-
man.
THE CHAIRMAN: Very well.
The Chair is not advised of any other
amendments to section 5-A.
Are there any other amendments to this
section?
Delegate Henderson?
DELEGATE HENDERSON: Mr. Chair-
man, I have an amendment which Senator
James mentioned, and I have another one
dividing the question which was proposed
under A, and I have a third amendment
under section 7, which I will offer, de-
pending on the outcome of the other two.
THE CHAIRMAN: Very well.
DELEGATE HENDERSON: Those are
the only ones.
THE CHAIRMAN: We will come back
to those after we have your other amend-
ment.
That brings us to consideration of sec-
tion 5-B. That is the subject of the Minority
Report. The Chair recognizes Delegate
Child to present the Minority Report. This
will be Minority Report R&P-1(A).
DELEGATE CHILD: Mr. Chairman—
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Child.
DELEGATE CHILD: Mr. Chairman, I
wish to call your attention to the fact that
the Minority Report has one word which
is wrong. It occurs on page 2, line 29, the
last word in that line is written as "re-
stricted." It should be "restrictive."
THE CHAIRMAN: Please correct your
copies of Minority Report R&P-1(A) and
change the last word in line 29 on page 2
from restricted to restrictive.
Delegate Child.
DELEGATE CHILD: Mr. Chairman, I
feel that I would be remiss if I did not
express my appreciation and admiration
for the efficiency, the kindness and co-
operation and the genuine hard work of
Chairman Dick Kiefer of our Committee.
|
I say without any fear of contradiction
that he did more work than any five people
on a Committee, and that he had a hard
crowd to manage. I think he was assigned
sixteen of the most independent minds in
the Convention, but as I worked with them,
I found that they were all good ladies and
gentlemen. They were dedicated. They were
trying to do their best to write a good
constitution for the State of Maryland. It
has been a pleasure and a privilege for me
to work with them, and I thank our Chair-
man and the members of the Committee for
tolerating me.
Now, the matter at hand. My Minority
Report is a very simple matter. It merely
proposes to strike section B of section 5
from the report. This I think will improve
the report.
My reason for that is the fact that we
already have in the report as the first line
of section A, section 8, on page 4, the
words "excessive bail shall not be re-
quired."
This revision which I propose by my
Minority Report and by the amendment
which I have offered, which is amendment
A, Mr. Chairman, also applies to bail, and
I do not think we want, or we need, in a
very short bill of rights two sections re-
garding bail.
I think that the wording in section 8 is
the present constitutional language. It is
sufficient, and section B is dangerous lan-
guage. It is statutory language rather
than constitutional language, and should
be stricken.
Now, you will notice that the Minority
Report is supported by nine people, which
is the majority of the Committee, so that
it is really a majority report, and not a
minority report, and you might want to
know how that came about.
This section B was passed after con-
siderable argument, when all of the Com-
mittee was not there and when three mem-
bers who were there abstained from voting.
Two days later, when I was absent, the
provision in section 8 was put into the
report.
After conferring with a number of the
delegates, all of the people whose names
appear on this Minority Report decided
that we were wrong when we put in sec-
tion B and that it should be stricken.
Now, why? Without repeating what I
said on the floor yesterday about the word-
ing of a provision in a bill of rights, I will
|
