Creswell v. Director, Patuxent Institution

Per Curiam. The applicant, George Lewis Creswell, seeks leave to appeal from an order of Judge Harry E. Clark sitting in the Circuit Court for Cecil County, dated September 15, 1966, denying post conviction relief. The applicant is presently confined in the Patuxent Institution pursuant to Article 31B of the Maryland Code (1967 Supp.), having first been admitted to that institution on July 23, 1958. In his post conviction petition, he raises a number of questions relating to his confinement in the Patuxent Institution, which are as follows: 1.

The procedures embodied in the Defective Delinquent Act were applied in the petitioner’s hearing in such a manner as to deprive him of due process within the confrontation requirement of the Sixth Amendment. 2. His eight year confinement for a two year sentence, coupled with the fact that he has only been convicted once in the Criminal Court and has been found guilty only of crimes against property, violates the cruel and unusual punishment clause of the Eighth Amendment. 3. As applied to petitioner, Patuxent does not in fact fur ¹⁴⁴ nish treatment which supports the Act under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. 4. The petitioner, as supported by his record at Patuxent, is reasonably safe for society as to demand his return to society. 5.

The Maryland courts have interpreted the words “emotionally unbalanced” in such a manner as to render the definition vague. 6. The petitioner’s classification as a defective delinquent does not rest on any reasonable basis and is arbitrary and therefore violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. While Judge Clark denied each of these contentions on their merits, relying mainly on Director v. Daniels, 243 Md. 16—a decision which fully supports such determination — none of the contentions, either directly or indirectly, challenges the legality of applicant’s judgment of conviction and thus are not properly cognizable under the Uniform Post Conviction Procedure Act. See Knox v. Director, 1 Md. App. 678 , decided August 25, 1967.

The Act provides a remedy primarily for challenging the legality of incarceration under judgment of conviction for a crime on the premise that it was imposed either (a) in violation of the Constitution of the United States or the Constitution or laws of this State, or (b) that the court was without jurisdiction to impose the sentence, or (c) that the sentence exceeds the maximum authorized by law, or (d) that the sentence is otherwise subject to collateral attack upon any ground of alleged error which would otherwise be available under a writ of habeas corpus, writ of coram nobis, or other common law or statutory remedy. As it is the judgment of conviction (which, of course, includes the sentence) for the criminal act that may be set aside or corrected under the Act, 1 post conviction proceedings may ¹⁴⁵ not be used as a vehicle of appeal from a determination of defective delinquency. Sansbury v. Director, 237 Md. 545; Krs v. Director, 230 Md. 646 . On the other hand, where it is urged by an inmate of Patuxent Institution that his criminal conviction was imposed in violation of his constitutional