Holt v. Warden of Md. Penitentiary, 31
| Decision Date | 09 October 1956 |
| Docket Number | No. 31,31 |
| Citation | 211 Md. 619,125 A.2d 842 |
| Parties | Joseph R. HOLT v. WARDEN OF MARYLAND PENITENTIARY. Application |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Before BRUNE, C. J., and COLLINS, HENDERSON, and HAMMOND, JJ.
This is an application for leave to appeal from the denial of a writ of habeas corpus. Petitioner was tried along with three other persons in the Circuit Court for St. Mary's County on two separate indictments for grand larceny and breaking and entering. He was arraigned on the first indictment on December 16, 1953, and he claims that he pleaded not guilty, but was never tried. On the second, he was arraigned on December 16, 1953, and pleaded not guilty. However, on March 3, 1954, he changed his plea to the second indictment to guilty, and on April 21, 1954, was sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary, to run consecutively with the sentence in the first case. On the same day he was sentenced to fourteen years in the first case.
The chief contention is that petitioner was never tried in the first case. He presents a copy of the docket entries in the first case, reading . This was certified by the clerk under the court seal on December 20, 1954. However, the clerk certified in response to a letter dated June 26, 1956, from Judge George Henderson, to whom an application for a writ was referred, that this line read: . No explanation was offered by the clerk as to why the copy supplied to the prisoner should have been different from that supplied to the court. Perhaps it was an error in transcription. In any event we must assume that the latest certificate correctly states the fact. It seems inconceivable that the judge would have imposed a consecutive sentence, if there had been no plea of guilty in the first case. We have recognized the inherent right of a court to alter commitments or clerical errors in the docket entries to make them conform to the truth. Cf. Lewis v. Warden, 203 Md. 676, 100 A.2d 803, and Madison v. State, 205 Md. 425, 431, 109 A.2d 96. If petitioner pleaded guilty in the first case, as he certainly did in the second, he cannot complain that no evidence was produced against him.
Petitioner also claims he was indicted in what was a non-jury term of court. But obviously, a grand jury can be recalled at any time, and the point is not open on habeas corpus in any event. The court did not lose its...
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Special Investigation No. 195, In re
...A.2d 87 (1963); and Stoll v. Baltimore, 163 Md. 282, 293, 162 A. 267 (1932). Annot., 75 A.L.R.2d 544 (1961), interprets Holt v. Warden, 211 Md. 619, 125 A.2d 842 (1956), cert. denied, 352 U.S. 1008, 77 S.Ct. 573, 1 L.Ed.2d 553 (1957), as holding that the power of a grand jury extends after ......
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Holt v. Warden of Md. Penitentiary
...post conviction relief. The previous application for leave to appeal was from the denial of a writ of habeas corpus. See Holt v. Warden, 1956, 211 Md. 619, 125 A.2d 842. When the applicant was arraigned on December 16, 1953, on one indictment (herein called the first), he claims he plead no......
- Davis v. Warden of Md. Penitentiary, 14
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Holt v. Peppersack, 7492.
...complains. This was in accord with holdings of the Maryland court on prior applications for habeas corpus. See Holt v. Warden of Maryland Penitentiary, 211 Md. 619, 125 A.2d 842. The appeal must be dismissed for lack of the certificate of probable cause required by 28 U.S. C. § 2253; but we......