Dobson v. Warden

Hammond, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. Donald Dobson pleaded guilty to seven separate offenses of armed robbery before Judge Joseph Carter and was sentenced to twenty years in each case, the sentences to be consecutive and, therefore, to aggregate one hundred and forty years. He then filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Baltimore City Court, which was denied by Judge Warnken. An application for leave to appeal was denied by this Court in Dobson v. Warden, 214 Md. 654 .

A subsequent petition for a writ of error coram nobis was denied by Judge Carter in the Criminal Court of Baltimore. There followed ahother habeas corpus petition in the Baltimore City Court, which was denied by Judge Mason. Dobson now makes application for leave to appeal from the dismissal by Judge Manley in the Criminal Court of Baltimore of his petition for relief under the Uniform Post Conviction Procedure Act (Code 1959 Supp., Art. 27, secs. 645A to 645J). Much of this petition deals with the alleged illegal harshness of his one-hundred-forty-year sentence.

These allegations were dealt with in his unsuccessful appeal from Judge Warnken’s denial of a writ of habeas corpus, Dobson v. Warden, supra, wherein it was held that the question was prematurely brought as the petitioner had not served out the plainly legal twenty-year portion of the sentences. Since section 645A (a) of the Post Conviction Procedure Act bars relief where the grounds therefor have been previously and finally litigated in “any other proceeding that the petitioner has taken to secure relief from his conviction”, these contentions cannot be raised now. Similarly, petitioner’s allegations going to the question of the incompetence or lack of diligence of counsel were also disposed of in Dobson v. Warden, supra, and cannot be dealt with now. ⁶⁹¹ Aside from petitioner’s contentions regarding the severity of his sentence, the greater part of his application raises matters connected with the sufficiency of the evidence upon which he was convicted. He claims that: “illegal statements [were] used in evidence against him,” but does not identify them; that perjury was committed with police acquiesence by one Doris William, a prosecuting witness who did