Bulluck v. Warden of Maryland Penitentiary

P^r Curiam. This application for leave to appeal from a denial of post conviction relief must be denied for the reasons stated by Judge Jones in her comprehensive and well-considered opinion filed in the Criminal Court of Baltimore on January 18, 1965, after a full hearing before the court with court-appointed counsel for the petitioner, the petitioner himself, and counsel for the State present and after the presentation by counsel and consideration by the court of memoranda presented by counsel for the petitioner and for the State. During the past seven years, there have been a number of prior proceedings in this matter. The petitioner was found guilty on April 17, 1958 by Judge Sodaro in the Criminal Court of Baltimore, sitting without a jury, of the rape of Lois Drawdy.

On the following day, April 18, 1958, he was found guilty by a jury, sitting before Judge Sodaro, of the rape of Bertha But ⁷¹⁷ ler. Judge Sodaro sentenced the petitioner to death by the administration of lethal gas. We affirmed both convictions in Bulluck v. State, 219 Md. 67 , 148 A. 2d 433 (1959). Governor Tawes, on July 24, 1959, upon the recommendation of Judge Sodaro, commuted the death sentence to terms of life imprisonment in each case, to run consecutively.

The petitioner had filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland which Chief Judge Thomsen denied on March 20, 1959. On March 26, 1959 the petitioner filed his first petition under the Post Conviction Procedure Act in the Criminal Court of Baltimore and, after a hearing in open court, Judge Joseph L. Carter dismissed the petition. We denied leave to appeal in Bulluck v. Warden, 220 Md. 658, 152 A. 2d 184 (1959). The Supreme Court of the United States denied certiorari on October 13, 1959.

See Bulluck v. Pepersack, Warden, 361 U. S. 847 , 80 S. Ct. 102 , 4 L. Ed. 2d 85 . The petitioner then filed a second petition for a writ of habeas corpus, which Judge Thomsen denied on November 23, 1959. On March 4, 1960, the petitioner filed his second petition under the Post Conviction Procedure Act which Judge Carter dismissed on June 14, 1960. No application for leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals was filed from this denial of relief.

The petitioner then