Brooks v. State

CHARLES E. ORTH, Jr.,

Retired, Specially Assigned Judge.

I

Our colonial forefathers had experienced “the close connection of criminal law with politics .... [TJheir constant fear of political oppression through the criminal law led them and the generation following ... to give excessive power to juries and to limit or even cut off the power of the trial judge to control the trial and hold the jury to its province.” Slansky v. State, 192 Md. 94, 101-102, 63 A.2d 599 (1949) (quoting R. Pound, The Spirit of the Common Law 122-123). See Stevenson v. State, 289 Md. 167, 174-175, 423 A.2d 558 (1980).…