In Loveday v. State, 296 Md. 226, 462 A.2d 58 (1983), a circuit court in a criminal case refused to impose what the State maintained was a mandatory 25-year sentence for the defendant's robbery conviction and instead imposed a 10-year sentence. The State appealed, and the Court, in an unreported opinion, held that a mandatory 25-year sentence was applicable. The Court vacated the sentence and remanded the case to the circuit court for further sentencing proceedings. The defendant did not file an application for writ of certiorari in the Court of Appeals. On remand, the sentencing judge reluctantly imposed a 25-year sentence. The defendant noted an appeal, challenging the imposition of the 25-year sentence on several grounds. The Court affirmed the judgment. The defendant filed a petition for certiorari, which was granted. The first question the Court of Appeals addressed was whether it was precluded from deciding the mandatory sentencing issue because the issue had been decided by the Court in the first appeal but had not been challenged thereafter by way of a petition for certiorari. The Court analyzed the issue under the law of the case doctrine, by which a decision of a superior court on an issue in a given case is binding on remand upon the lower court in the same case. The Court concluded that that doctrine does not apply and bind it to accept a decision of this Court on an issue rendered in an earlier appeal in the same case, but not challenged by means of a petition for certiorari when made. Specifically, the Court observed that "the law of the case doctrine does not apply to" an appellate court such as itself, that "is required to review judgments of subordinate courts." Loveday, supra, 296 Md. at 234.