Plater v. Warden

⁶⁷⁴ Henderson, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an application for leave to appeal from an order denying a petition under the Post Conviction Procedure Act. The petitioner’s contentions are fully discussed and refuted in an elaborate opinion by Chief Judge Niles in the court below. We deem it necessary to comment upon one point only, because it has some elements of novelty and was strongly pressed in the court below by court-appointed counsel for the petitioner.

The petitioner was convicted of robbery with a deadly weapon and sentenced to ten years in 1955. He contends that the counsel appointed by the court had previously been retained by his codefendant, and that the appointment was improper and inadequate because of a conflict of interest. This same contention was raised before Judge Gray in 1956, in a petition for habeas corpus, and denied. On application for leave to appeal to this Court, we affirmed the action of Judge Gray and denied the application.

Plater v. Warden, 211 Md. 629 . The contention was also found to be without merit in Plater v. Warden, 261 F. 2d 445 . The applicant now contends that the previous adjudication is not binding, for the reason that he was not represented by counsel at the hearing before Judge Gray, and that since denial of a writ of habeas corpus does not preclude recourse to another judge, the rule of res judicata is inapplicable. There is no merit in these contentions.

There is no statutory requirement that counsel be appointed for an indigent defendant in an