Why Maryland Should Allow 28 Days for Post-Trial Motions
What attracts many lawyers to appellate practice—besides an unusual appetite for legal writing and a general distaste for contentious discovery—is the confidence that fire drills and surprises rarely occur. Appellate briefing deadlines and oral arguments are normally set months in advance, and extensions are liberally granted. Appellate lawyers often seem to be nicer (albeit nerdier) people. And everyone on appeal is bound by the trial-court record. No juries and no witnesses. Just the lawyers and a panel of judges applying the law to the settled facts on record.
This dynamic of unharried research and rules-driven deliberation often yields superior legal analysis, not because appellate lawyers are smarter than other litigators but because they usually have the time to reflect on an issue and get it right. They also know that opposing counsel and reviewing judges will have time to carefully consider whatever they write and say. Any missteps or misrepresentations will most likely be noticed and exposed.
Read More…Rules or Rulings: When Can an Agency Decide?
Regulatory agencies are often presented with the big issues of the day in different ways. A matter of policy — and controversy — may arise when an agency is requested to make a new regulation or rule, asked to award grants or funding, tasked with overseeing government projects, or resolving administrative complaints. Modern advocates see numerous potential paths to the desired outcome and employ multi-pronged strategies to try to get there.
Obviously, to those advocates, and the stakeholders and public affected, the policy that eventually results matters a lot. To the agencies — and the administrative lawyers who deal with them — how they consider the policy, and what procedures are used, also matter a lot. What power an agency has to pick the posture, forum, and mechanisms in which to consider disputed issues recently generated a split Appellate Court decision in In the Matter of Maryland Office of People’s Counsel, et al., that establishes some limitations on that discretion.
Read More…Denial of Right to Public Trial or De Minimis Violation?
In March 2024, the Supreme Court of Maryland (SCM) granted the State’s petition for certiorari in State v. Scarboro, ACM No. 1646 (Sept. Term 2022), SCM No. 4 (Sept. Term 2024), an unreported decision by Chief Judge Wells. The State’s petition presented the following question: when an appellant claims a Sixth Amendment violation of the right to a public trial based on the trial court’s ostensible denial of courtroom access, does the burden lie with appellant to establish preliminarily that the courtroom closure is significant enough (i.e. not “de minimis”) that it implicates the constitutional right and requires analysis under the four-part test articulated in Waller v. Georgia, 467 U.S. 39, 48 (1984)?
It is the first time in over 30 years that the Supreme Court will hear a case involving the right to a public trial, since its 1992 decision in Watters v. State, 328 Md. 38 (1992). In Watters, the SCM found a violation of the right to a public trial after a deputy sheriff, citing an overcrowded courtroom, prevented the public, the press, and members of the defendant’s family, from entering the courtroom for an entire morning during which voir dire and jury selection occurred. The SCM held that this was not a de minimis violation.
Read More…MSBA to Hold Networking Event and Panel Discussion on Impact Decisions of Maryland’s Appellate Courts
On Wednesday, April 3, 2024, the Litigation Section Appellate Practice Committee of the Maryland State Bar Association will host a networking event, followed by a panel discussion on several impact decisions of the 2023 term. Panelists will include civil and criminal appellate practitioners.
The event will be held at the Robert C. Murphy Courts of Appeal building in Annapolis and begins at 5:30 p.m. Panelists include:
- The Honorable J. Bradford McCullough,
Circuit Court for Montgomery County - Douglas Nivens, II, Esq.
Office of the Public Defender, Appellate Division - Rachel Marblestone-Kamins, Esq.
Office of the Public Defender, Appellate Division - Jer Welter, Esq.
Chief Criminal Appeals Division, Maryland Office of the Attorney General
For more information and to register, visit the MSBA website.
Maryland Appellate Blog 