Roe v. Director

PER Curiam. On December 12, 1963 Judge J. DeWeese Carter, sitting without a jury in the Circuit Court for Talbot County, convicted the applicant, Charles Edward Roe, of assault and unnatural and perverted sexual practice on a female child. The applicant was sentenced on January 20, 1964 to one year for assault and four years for perverted practice to be served concurrently in the Maryland House of Correction. On January 24, 1964 the applicant was ordered taken to the Patuxent Institution for a determination of whether he was a Defective Delinquent.

He is presently confined at Patuxent. No appeal was taken from the applicant’s conviction. On December 15, 1964 he filed a petition for relief under the Uniform Post Conviction Procedure Act. Counsel was appointed by the court to represent the applicant at a hearing on his petition which was held before Judge Thomas J. Keating on May 20-21, 1965.

Post conviction relief was d'enied and a memorandum opinion was filed on May 27, 1965. This application for leave to appeal followed. In his petition for post conviction relief the applicant contends : 1) that the State knowingly allowed the prosecuting wit ⁷¹⁹ ness to perjure herself and tell a false story; 2) that the prosecuting witness, a child six and one-half years old at the time of the trial, was incompetent to testify against the applicant because of her mental incapacity due to infancy. Here on appeal the applicant makes the following contentions which were not presented in his petition for post conviction relief; 3) that the evidence was insufficient to convict since the victim never underwent a medical examination and the court relied merely upon the victim’s testimony and the “hearsay” evidence of “jealous” third parties; 4) that the applicant was “not guilty” of the charges brought against him; 5) that the applicant advised his attorney of his desire for a jury trial but counsel requested and obtained a trial by the court sitting as a jury; and 6) that his counsel was incompetent because he was not interested enough to ask for a jury trial.

The applicant’s first and second contentions were raised in his petition and exhaustively