Hall v. Warden of the Maryland Penitentiary

Per Curiam. This is an application for leave to appeal from an order of ⁷³² the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County dated January 17, 1966, which denied the relief sought by James Daniel Plall in his petition filed in that court under the Uniform Post Conviction Act. Hall was convicted, by a jury in the Circuit Court of Prince George’s County, of robbery with a deadly weapon on May 8, 1963, and sentenced to fifteen years in the Maryland Penitentiary. Hall appealed that judgment and sentence to this Court.

Hall v. State, 233 Md. 378 , 196 A. 2d 874 (1964). For purposes of that appeal, we assumed that the initial detention of Hall by the police was illegal, but held that such illegal detention did not vitiate a warrant sworn out subsequent to and based upon admissions voluntarily made by Hall during the time he was held without legal cause. We found, therefore, that Hall’s fingerprints, obtained following service of the warrant, were taken when he was in lawful custody, did not constitute the fruit of an illegal arrest, and thus were properly admitted into evidence at his trial. We also ruled that, the fingerprints being admissible, “there was sufficient evidence, if believed by the trier of fact, to convict Hall of robbery with a deadly weapon.” Five of the applicant’s six contentions 1 in this petition ask us, in effect, to review what we have already decided.

Despite undisputed testimony at Hall’s original trial that his fingerprints, were obtained following service of the warrant, Hall offered evidence in his post conviction hearing, tending to show that the fingerprints were obtained before the warrant was issued. The short answer to these allegations is that the applicant has no. right to raise them in a post conviction hearing. Code, Article 27, sec. 645 A (Supp. 1965) denies the right to post conviction relief when the alleged error has been “previously and finally ⁷³³ litigated or waived in the proceedings resulting in the conviction * * Subsection (b) of section 645 A further provides: “(b) When, allegation of error deemed to he finally litigated—For the purposes of this subtitle, an allegation of error shall be deemed to be finally litigated when the Court of Appeals has rendered a decision on the merits thereof, either upon direct appeal or upon any consideration of an application for leave to appeal filed pursuant to § 645-1 of this