Porter v. State

The principal issue in this criminal case is whether, during the jury selection phase of the case, conversations at the bench between the trial judge and certain prospective jurors regarding the ability of those jurors to serve beyond their scheduled term constituted a "stage of the trial” at which the defendants had a.right to be present.

The defendants, Orville Joseph Porter and Wayne Preston Morris, were each charged with a sexual offense in the first degree and were tried jointly in the Criminal Court of Baltimore. At the beginning of the jury selection process, the trial court advised the…