1296                                      VETOES

301, which I have previously signed. Accordingly, House Bill 64 has
been vetoed as unnecessary.

Respectfully,

(s) THEODORE R. MCKELDIN,

Governor
TRMcK:mg

House Bill No. 74—Bail and Collateral, Baltimore City

AN ACT to repeal and re-enact, with amendments, Section 193 of the
Charter and Public Local Laws of Baltimore City (1949 Edition),
title "City of Baltimore," sub-title "Bail," providing that the
commanding officer of any police station, or any officer designated
by him, may SHALL take bail OR COLLATERAL in the absence
of the police justice sitting at that police station and further pro-
viding that the State's Attorney of Baltimore City shall provide
every such commanding officer with a list of bailable offenses and
the amount of bail OR COLLATERAL required for each offense,
AND RELATING GENERALLY TO THE PROVISIONS AND
REQUIREMENT FOR TAKING OF SUCH BAIL OR COLLAT-
ERAL.

April 28,1955
Honorable John C. Luber
Speaker of the House of Delegates
State House
Annapolis, Maryland

Dear Mr. Speaker:

House Bill 74 is designed to authorize the commanding officers of
Baltimore City police stations to accept bail or collateral on occasions
when the police magistrate is unavailable. To meet stated objections
of the Baltimore City Police Commissioner and the Attorney General,
this bill, at my suggestion, was recalled by its sponsors after passage
and amended in two particulars.

One amendment authorizes the police officer accepting the bail to
administer an oath and makes false swearing punishable as perjury.
The second amendment, designed to eliminate the possibility of a
"racket" in bail bonds, attempts to make it bribery for a police
officer to accept a gratuity from a bondsman regardless of the motives
involved. It goes even further by also defining as bribery an attempt
by a police officer to inform a bondsman of a pending bail. Literal
application of these provisions could make a crime of a perfectly
innocent act, such as a call to a bondsman at the request of the
prisoner.

The criminal provisions of the bill, drastically altering existing
ideas as to what constitutes the crime of bribery, are deemed by the
Attorney General to be so vague and indefinite as probably to be
unconstitutional. In addition, the title of the bill as originally in-
troduced was not changed in any manner to reflect the two substantial
amendments which it now embodies. This failure, the Attorney Gen-
eral advises, undoubtedly renders the title insufficient to meet con-
stitutional requirements.