delivered the opinion of the Court.
Appellant, after having been found guilty by a jury in the Criminal Court of Baltimore on October 16, 1975, of first degree murder and carrying a concealed weapon, was' *69 sentenced to life imprisonment on the murder charge and three years’ imprisonment, to be served concurrently, on the concealed weapons charge. On appeal he challenges only the murder conviction, making two contentions: (1) the trial judge’s instructions to the jury improperly placed the burden of proving self-defense upon appellant; (2) the evidence was insufficient to support a verdict of murder in the first degree.
The State in this case concedes, correctly we think, that: (1) the issue of self-defense was fairly generated by the evidence adduced; (2) the trial judge told the jury that the defendant had the burden of persuasion on the question of self-defense, and therefore the instruction was erroneous under
Mullaney v. Wilbur,
Maryland Rule 756 g provides that ordinarily an appellate court will not consider an error in a jury instruction unless the instruction was objected to before the jury retired. However, the rule further states that an appellate court “may take cognizance of and correct any plain error in the instructions, material to the rights of the accused even though such error was not objected to ....”
See Dempsey v.
*70
State,
On July 15, 1976, in
State v. Evans, supra,
“For the purposes of this subtitle and notwithstanding any other provision hereof, no allegation of error shall be deemed to have been finally litigated or waived where, subsequent to any decision upon the merits thereof or subsequent to any proceeding in which said allegation otherwise may have been waived, any court whose decisions are binding upon the lower courts of this State holds that the Constitution of the United States or of Maryland imposes upon State criminal proceedings a procedural or substantive standard not theretofore recognized, which such standard is intended to be applied retrospectively and would thereby affect the validity of the petitioner’s conviction or sentence.”
The Court of Appeals reasoned that since the
“Mullaney
errors were subject to collateral attack under this section in any event,” it was not inappropriate to take cognizance of the erroneous instruction on direct appeal “notwithstanding the fact that the errors may not have been technically ‘plain’ within the traditional application of the rule’s provisions.”
About a week after the Court of Appeals decision in
Evans,
the Court of Special Appeals rendered its decision in
*71
Squire v. State,
“[W]e note that the decision to treat as plain error the faulty instruction given in Evans stands in contrast with that here involved in that the error in Evans occurred before the Supreme Court decided Mullaney, whereas the error in the present case occurred subsequent to that decision. In its affirmance of the judgment in Evans v. State, the Court of Appeals considered it appropriate to recognize, as ‘plain error’ under Rule 756 g, an error in jury instructions committed in a case tried prior to the Mullaney decision, since in view of Mullaney’s retroactive application, the error was one specifically open to collateral attack under the provisions of the Post Conviction Procedure Act, Maryland Code (1957, 1976 Repl. Vol.), Article 27, § 645A (d).”
It is true that section (d) of the Post Conviction Procedure Act, which furnished the basis for taking cognizance of the erroneous instruction in Evans, has no application to a trial occurring subsequent to the decision announcing a new constitutional standard. Nevertheless, as the State acknowledged in oral argument in the instant case, section (c) of the Post Conviction Procedure Act might be applicable to furnish relief to a defendant tried after Mullaney, where it is contended that the defendant waived any *72 complaint about the constitutionally erroneous instruction by failing to object at trial. Section (c) provides in part:
“For the purposes of this subtitle, an allegation of error shall be deemed to be waived when a petitioner could have made, but intelligently and knowingly failed to make, such allegation ... at trial. . ..” (Emphasis supplied.)
Section (c) of the Post Conviction Procedure Act thus requires something more than an attorney’s failure to object; it requires an intelligent and knowing waiver by the defendant himself.
Jourdan v. State,
Although appellant may be entitled to post conviction relief, and although the reasoning in Evans might appear to be applicable to the present case considering section (c) of the Post Conviction Procedure Act, in view of the recent Squire decision by this court we must decline to take cognizance of the erroneous self-defense instruction. No factors are present in this case which were absent in Squire and which would justify a different result. In fact, there might have been more excuse for the attorney’s failure to object to the instruction in Squire than in the present case, since Mullaney was decided only four days before the trial in Squire but more than four months before the instant trial. The decision not to take cognizance of the error in the instruction in this case is, of course, without prejudice to any petition which may be filed under the Post Conviction Procedure Act.
Turning to the second issue raised by the appellant, we have reviewed the record and conclude that there was sufficient evidence to support a first degree murder verdict.
Judgment affirmed.
Appellant to pay costs.
