Case ID: pr_11/html/0360-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Mr. Justice Figueras", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Ex Parte Mila.
    Application for a Writ of Habeas Corpus.
    
    No. 8.
    Decided November 5, 1906.
    Habeas Corpus — Pine—Imprisonment.—The discharge of a prisoner under habeas corpus proceedings cannot be conditional or alternative, and therefore where an application for the writ is based on the ground that the petitioner Raving been imprisoned for failure to pay a fine, lie has a right to be discharged upon paying the fine to cover that part of his imprisonment still to be served, computed according to the rate fixed by the law, must be denied unless it appears that the corresponding amount of the fine has been paid, or that it has been legally deposited.
    The application was presented to Mr. Justice Figueras at chambers'.
    The facts are stated in the opinion..
    
      Mr. Miguel Guerra for petitioner.
    
      Mr. Rossy, fiscal, for The People.
   Mr. Justice Figueras

delivered the opinion of the court.

Even in the supposition that sections 54 and 322 of the Code of Criminal Procedure could be construed as has been done by the petitioner — -that is to say, as meaning that upon his paying at the rate of 50 cents for each day he has yet to serve, the prisoner should be released — the result would always be that at the present moment his imprisonment is legal, because it does not appear that the portion of the fine to which he refers has been paid, nor that said fine has been satisfied in the proper legal manner. A release cannot be decreed in a conditional or alternative form. The release of the petitioner, Luis Mila, cannot be granted, and he is ordered to remain under the custody of the warden of the municipal jail of San Juan, Pedro Pares, who conducted him here, with costs against the petitioner.