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The jury came in and found her guilty on
four counts of manslaughter. She had
killed all four of her children. This would
have been imposssible under the District
law. She would have been acquitted. There-
fore, this rule does not have the practical
effect even today. We do still allow incon-
sistent verdicts.
The second thing is whether or not, as a
practical matter, the power is important
and since we do not allow special verdicts
in criminal cases, in other words, you do
not direct a jury to bring back a limited
verdict and find certain facts, it does make
a certain amount of sense to keep this in
our law.
Our own Judge Henderson wrote a law
review article, or actually, he gave a speech
which was very well received, to the Mary-
land Bar Association, I believe, in Atlantic
City, where he approved this particular
doctrine after the General Assembly had
refused to propose a constitutional amend-
ment in 1946 on this particular point. The
complaints that he had in this particular
area were removed when the judges were
allowed to determine the sufficiency of the
evidence.
Now, it boils down really to the situation
where you have inconsistent verdicts, where
the juries, in fact, disregard the instruc-
tions of the judge, and where the attor-
neys are allowed to argue any law to a
jury, that is, as long as it is law. You
cannot object that there is no such law.
They generally have to cite cases. It is
said to be abused by the defense counsel,
by the State. I have seen it on occasion
abused by defense counsel. I have ob-
jected and had those objections sustained,
assuming there was no such law, and where
law was clearly erroneously given to the
jury-
In any event, it seems to me and it seems
to the Committee that this historic right
that we have had for at least the last one
hundred and fifty years in Maryland should
continue, and despite the fact that it has
fallen into some disuse in the other states,
it is important to continue it in Maryland.
The other position, or the other point
that I am to give, is on the question of
governmental immunity. We had several
proposals on that. If you all remember, in
our present Constitution we have a clause
that says all men are entitled to a remedy.
I wish I could find it very quickly to read
it to you. Essentially, it is Article 19 of
the present Declaration of Rights. It is
beautiful language. Remedy for injury to
persons or property: "That every man, for
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any injury done to him or in his person or
property, ought to have remedy by the
course of the Law of the Land, and ought
to have justice and right, freely without
sale, fully without any denial, and speedily
without delay, according to the Law of the
Land."
Now, this is the present language of our
Maryland Constitution. When we came to
it, we liked the language, but we found
out that in a hundred years it had not
meant a thing and so we decided to give
some meaning to the language. We have
come up with the proposal that abolishes
the governmental immunity. This is the
doctrine that grows up out of the old con-
cept that the king can do no wrong, and,
in fact, we feel that in this clay and age,
we have no kings. Sovereignty rests in the
people, not in a king.
The original concept was that all jus-
tice came from the king, and if justice
came from him, you could not very well
sue him. Well, we feel that this doctrine
has no application. However, it is limited.
It is not a dramatic change with the past in
one sense because it does provide for ex-
ceptions to be made by statute, and this is
done to avoid objections to it so that there
can be an orderly development.
In excess of thirty states have now
abolished governmental immunity, four by
way of constitutional provision. We feel it
is an important right, and when we wrote
this Bill of Rights, we intended these
things to be justiciable provisions, to have
meaning. We took out the lovely language
of Article 19 and put in something that
means something to the people of Mary-
land.
In other words, this will spread the cost
of injury, of damages under the concept of
the common law as we as individuals are all
liable for. This will spread the cost among
all the citizens, and will prevent the hor-
rible situation that a single citizen has to
pay for the wrong that the whole State
does.
That is essentially the provision that I
am going to present. If there are any
questions, I will be glad to answer them
within my rather limited ability.
DELEGATE J. CLARK (presiding):
Are there any questions of Delegate Wil-
loner?
The Chair recognizes Delegate Byrnes.
DELEGATE BYRNES: Delegate Wil-
loner, did you cover section 4? I see
nothing in the Majority Report. That is on
page 2.
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