Johns v. Warden of Maryland Penitentiary

⁶²⁵ Collins, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an application for leave to appeal from the refusal of a writ of habeas corpus by Judge John T. Tucker, of the Baltimore City Court, on January 7, 1955. Since that action by Judge Tucker the writ has been denied to the petitioner on January 25, 1955, by Judge E. Paul Mason and on March 7, 1955, by Judge Michael J. Manley. We are informed that he has been denied the writ of habeas corpus twenty-seven times.

He was convicted of murder on January 9, 1938, and sentenced to life imprisonment. This is his second application for leave to appeal to this Court. The first application was denied by this Court on November 11, 1954, in Johns v. Warden, 205 Md. 644 , 108 A. 2d 906 . One of the grounds alleged therein was that perjured testimony was used against him.

In rejecting this argument we said: “ ‘A bald assertion that perjured testimony was deliberately used against him is insufficient, in the absence of “facts showing that the State’s officers used testimony known to be perjured, or participated in any conspiracy to defraud petitioner of his rights.” ’ Reeder v. Warden, 196 Md. 683, 685 , 77 A. 2d 1 , and cases there cited.” In this second application to appeal, now before us, petitioner alleges that the testimony used by the State to convict him amounted to perjury and that the State’s Attorney knew that such testimony was not true. To substantiate this allegation he says that Maggie Maitland, the only witness against him, when interviewed by Officer Herman Trautner on October 31, 1937, the date George Carter was killed, about the murder for which he was convicted, stated to that officer that she did not know anything about it. He further says that on November 2, 1937, Maggie Maitland told Officer Trautner: “Arrest that man. That was the fellow that stabbed Carter on George Street,” and Officer Trautner then arrested him.

He and Maggie Maitland were then taken before a magistrate and Maggie Maitland there stated that she saw the petitioner, another man, and George Carter leave a cafe ⁶²⁶ together and proceed to 626 George Street. There the petitioner stabbed George Carter. Petitioner and the other man then left Carter lying on the steps of 626 George Street. The two men returned later, the other man throwing bricks at the deceased.

They left again and returned twenty minutes later and the other man took money from the deceased’s pocket. The assailants then left and disappeared. Petitioner further states that at the coroner’s inquest held on November 3,1937, Maggie Maitland testified in the presence of an assistant State’s Attorney: “He stabbed him once. That’s when I saw him,- and then he went away and came back again and pulled out the knife and came back again and did like that.” She further said, when asked whether petitioner stabbed him again: “That was twice I see it, yes, sir, and that is all I saw.” Petitioner further alleges that at his trial on or about December 15, 1937, the record will show that the attorney for the State made the following opening statement: “At this moment a woman, the witness, Maggie Maitland, — she had walked west from Pennsylvania Avenue from some restaurant there, west on Biddle Street, and she turned the corner into George Street.

George Street and Biddle Street meet there at an angle, right at the exit or stopped point of Pine Street, and she proceeded to walk eastward on George Street, and as she did so she heard the deceased holler: ‘They’re robbing me, They’re robbing me.’ At this same time she saw one of these two men go into the pockets of Carter’s coat. As she approached