More on the Baffling Opinion of the Supreme Court of Maryland in the Adnan Syed Case

In yesterday's post on the Adnan Syed case, I noted that

the court ruled that (1) the notice given to Hae's family was not reasonable; (2) Hae's family had the right to attend in person; and (3) Hae's family has the right to be heard on the merits of the Motion. Out of the three rulings, the third one seems the most egregious and unprecedented, doing real damage to the innocence movement and cases in which the State and defense agree there was a wrongful conviction.

I think the dissenting opinion of Justice Booth (joined by Justices Hotten and Battaglia) does a great job of explaining the issues with this third ruling.

The gist of the dissent is that the majority opinion was wrong to read a right for the victim's family to be heard on the merits of a Motion to Vacate a wrongful conviction based upon the presence of such a right in Maryland's sentencing statute. Namely, as a matter of statutory construction, including such a right in one statute and not including such a right in a second statute should be read as the legislature not intending for such a right to apply in the second statute. Second, it makes sense to have the victim's family address the court at the sentencing stage so they can explain the impact the victim's loss had on the family and the community so that the judge can decide what bearing this has on the convicted defendant's punishment. Conversely, such a right to address the merits makes no sense when the prosecution and defense agree that a defendant was wrongfully convicted and the court is simply deciding whether a legal standard has been satisfied (in this case, the Brady standard).

Here is the pertinent portion of the dissenting opinion:

-CM