Medley v. Warden of Maryland House of Correction

Henderson, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. These applications for leave to appeal from denials of writs of habeas corpus were consolidated at the petitioner’s request. A previous application for leave to appeal was denied in Medley v. Warden, 207 Md. 634 , certiorari denied, 350 U. S. 925 . The petitioner was tried and convicted on October 13, 1954, by the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County on six charges of forgery committed in September, 1954.

He was sentenced to six years in the Maryland House of Correction. At the trial he was represented by competent counsel and entered a plea of not guilty. No question was raised as to the jurisdiction of the court, and no appeal was taken. On December 15, 1955, he was tried and convicted in the Criminal Court of Baltimore on four charges of forgery committed in September, 1954, to which he pleaded guilty.

He was sentenced to one year to run concurrently with his previous sentence. Since he is detained under both sentences, the State contends that a consideration of the legality of his detention under the first conviction is premature. However, the petitioner contends that neither court had jurisdiction to impose the sentences. The petitioner describes in his brief the sequence of events leading up to his arrest and trial.

He travelled from North Carolina to Fairfax, Virginia, with a printing press and other paraphernalia, and at his room in a motel there prepared a number of “phony” payroll checks purporting to have been drawn to his order by a Hagerstown construction company. A few days later he endorsed and passed these checks to mer ⁶⁵² chants in Annapolis and Baltimore for goods purchased. He was arrested by Annapolis police, who used at the subsequent trial evidence obtained from a search of his room by Virginia police. The contentions that this evidence was improperly admitted, or was legally insufficient, were dealt with in his previous application for habeas corpus.

His chief present contention is that there was no proof that the crimes of forgery were committed in Maryland, and hence the Maryland courts lacked jurisdiction. We think the contention is without merit. The petitioner relies upon a statement in Ginsberg, Criminal Law, p. 330, that forgery is committed where the false writing is made, with intent to defraud. See also 2 Beale, Conflict of Laws, p. 1355.

He contends that there is no evidence that the checks were printed in Maryland, although he admits that he endorsed them at the time they were cashed. The fact that he might have been prosecuted under the False Pretense Act or the Worthless Check Act, Code (1951), Art. 27, secs. 165 and 167, is immaterial. Lyman v. State, 136 Md. 40 . Cf.

Willis v. State, 205 Md. 118, 125 . He was charged in separate counts with forging and uttering, which are both designated as offenses under Code (1951), Art. 27, sec. 51. It is a complete answer to the petitioner’s contention that the proof of uttering, which is not denied, would alone support the general verdicts. Cf.

Harris v. State, 182 Md. 27, 31 . It is