McDonough v. Director

Per Curiam. Applicant was convicted of five separate charges of assault and battery, and one charge each of malicious destruction of property, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct by a trial magistrate in Baltimore County on April 6, 1959. From these convictions, applicant, with aid of counsel, filed an order for appeal to the “Criminal Court of Baltimore County.” On August 5, 1960, before a jury, with Judge John Grason Turnbull presiding, the jury returned verdicts of guilty in all eight cases. ⁵⁴¹ Applicant was sentenced to two years in the Maryland House of Correction on one of the assault charges, sentence being suspended on all other charges. Subsequently, on January 17, 1962, he was found to be a defective delinquent and committed to Patuxent Institution pursuant to Section 5 of Article 31B of the Maryland Code.

He applied for leave to appeal from this determination, but his application was denied by the Court of Appeals on July 25, 1962. See McDonough v. Director, 229 Md. 626 . On November 18, 1964, applicant filed a petition for a redetermination as to whether he was still a defective delinquent. A hearing was held on June 30, 1965 and on February 14, 1967, he was again found to be a defective delinquent by Judge Walter M. Jenifer in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County, sitting without a jury. 1 After he was recommitted to Patuxent Institution, he filed an application for leave to appeal and a memorandum in support thereof.

His court-appointed attorney filed a supplemental brief on his behalf. A transcript of the redetermination proceedings before Judge Jenifer has been obtained and a copy made available to the applicant. The applicant raises 135 contentions in his application for leave to appeal, most of which relate, in one way or another, to the sufficiency of the evidence adduced at his original and re-determination hearings to support his adjudication and confinement as a defective delinquent. We do not, of course, consider on this application the sufficiency of the evidence offered to support his original confinement as a defective delinquent, that issue having been foreclosed in McDonough v. Director, supra.

The redetermination hearing now in question was held before the court sitting without a jury, so that the judgment of the lower court will not be set aside on the evidence unless clearly erroneous. See Johns v. Director, 239 Md. 411 . A review of the evidence clearly indicates that the lower court’s finding that applicant was still a defective delinquent was not clearly erroneous. ⁵⁴² Applicant advances a number of contentions which were not raised at the redetermination hearing and, accordingly, they are not properly before us for consideration. See Wise v. Director, 1 Md. App. 418 .

Numerous of the contentions raised by applicant in his present application were previously raised at the time of his original hearing to determine his status as a defective delinquent and were adjudicated against him by the lower court and ultimately by the Court of Appeals in McDonough v. Director, supra. And many of the contentions now sought to be raised have been decided adversely to applicant in Director v. Daniels, supra. Other contentions advanced by the applicant are such as defy intelligent grouping and some do not clearly appear to have been raised below. Applicant contends, for example, that the re-determination hearing judge was senile, that his counsel at the hearing was incompetent, that the examining psychiatrists at Patuxent Institution were not licensed physicians in Maryland, 2 that he did not have his counsel present during the examination conducted by Patuxent doctors, 3 that the doctors were prejudiced against him, that he is innocent of the criminal charges forming the foundation of his commitment to Patuxent Institution and has new evidence that he didn’t commit these crimes, that he was entrapped, that he was denied a speedy trial, that he was unlawfully placed in solitary confinement at the Institution, that he was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, that evidence used against him was suppressed, and that he was unable to effectively utilize the discovery procedures available to him under, the Maryland Rules of Procedure.

On the record before us, we find no merit to any of these contentions. Several contentions advanced by applicant merit special