Murel v. Director

Horney, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an application for leave to appeal from the order of the Criminal Court of Baltimore dated December 21, 1964, recommitting Albert Delane Murel to Patuxent Institution after a jury had determined that he was still a defective delinquent within the meaning of § 5 of Article 3IB of the Code (1964 Cum. Supp.). The applicant was convicted of burglary and sentenced on February 5, 1962, to a term of one year in the Maryland State Reformatory dating from December 10, 1961.

On April 12, 1962, the applicant was transferred to Patuxent for evaluation at the request of the Department of Correction. On November-30, 1962, the applicant was found to be a defective delinquent by Judge Byrnes sitting without a jury. The application for leave to appeal from the initial determination of defective delinquency was denied by this Court in Murel v. Director, 231 Md. 661 , 191 A. 2d 445 (1963). In the interim between the initial defective delinquent hearing and the redetermination hearing, the applicant filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, seeking his release from Patuxent on the grounds, primarily, that the defective delinquent law violates the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, subjected him to double jeopardy and compelled him to-be a witness against himself in violation of the Fifth Amend- ²⁶⁰ ment.

The petition was denied without a hearing and upon appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the case was consolidated with a number of other cases generally known as the Consolidated Sas Cases. The decision in those cases is reported in Sas v. Maryland, 334 F. 2d 506 (4th Cir. 1964). In this application for leave to appeal from the order recommitting him to Patuxent, the applicant raised only three contentions: (i) that the finding of the jury was against the weight of the evidence; (ii) that his testimony conclusively showed that he was ready to resume his role in society; and (iii) that the sole witness for the State (Dr. Harold M. Boslow) was allowed to testify as to the conclusions reached by others and not from first hand knowledge. But when he filed his memorandum in support of his application for leave to appeal, the applicant raised a number of questions concerning the constitutionality of the defective delinquent law in general, and a specific issue as to whether he, as one of the inmates of Patuxent, was receiving effectual treatment for his defective delinquency.

Although he was aware of the fact that the additional issues he sought to raise