Case ID: sw_221/html/0975-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "LATTIMORE, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Ex parte ROACH.
    (No. 5839.)
    (Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas.
    May 19, 1920.)
    1. Habeas corpus &wkey;>29 — Showing that judgment entered was void essential.
    The Court of Criminal Appeals will not entertain jurisdiction of a habeas corpus proceeding unless it be made to appear that the judgment entered was void.
    2. Infants &wkey;>l6 — Judgment in juvenile prosecution held void as failing to specify time of confinement. '
    A judgment in a juvenile prosecution committing a juvenile to a girls’ training school without reciting the beginning or ending or duration of the confinement held void, under Vernon’s Ann. Code Cr. Proc. 1916, art. 1197, as amended by Acts 35th Leg. 4th Called Sess. (1918) c. 26, requiring the judgment in a juvenile prosecution to specify both the time and place of confinement.
    3. Infants &wkey;>l6 — Judgment charging juvenile with being “incorrigible” held insufficient as basis of commitment.
    Merely charging a juvenile with being a delinquent and incorrigible child is insufficient to constitute the basis of a valid judgment, under Vernon’s Ann. Code Cr. Proc. 1916, art. 1199, requiring the pleading in a prosecution under the Juvenile Act to set forth the act or acts claimed to have been committed by the accused to constitute her an,incorrigible child; an “incorrigible” being one who cannot be reformed.
    [Ed. Note. — For other definitions, see Words and Phrases, hirst and Second Series, Incorrigible.]
    Application for habeas corpus by Vera Roach.
    Relator discharged.
    Fuller & Brady, of Galveston, for appellant.
    Alvin M. Owsley, Asst. Atty. Gen., for the State.
   LATTIMORE, J.

This is an effort on behalf of relator, Vera Roach, by due presentation here of an original application for a writ of habeas corpus, to secure her release from the Girls’ Training School at Gainesville, Tex., to which she was committed by order of the juvenile court at Galveston in December, 1919. This court will not entertain jurisdiction of this habeas corpus unless it be made to appear that the judgment entered was void. A copy of the judgment is attached to the answer of the respondent, the head of the said Girls’ Training School, and it at once appears from an inspection of said judgment that same is fatally defective. It is specifically required by article 1197, Vernon’s C. C. P., as amended by Acts of the Fourth Called Session of the Thirty-Fifth Legislature, p. 43, that the judgment in the case of a juvenile prosecution must specify both the time and place of confinement. This does not appear in the judgment in the instant case, by which relator is merely committed to said Girl’s Training School. There is neither beginning nor ending of said confinement, nor anything as to the duration thereof.

We also observe that, in order to be a valid judgment, same must be based upon a complaint or indictment charging at least substantially the elements of the offense. It is specifically required by article 1199 of Vernon’s C. O. P. that in the state’s pleading in a prosecution under the Juvenile Act said pleading shall set forth the act or acts claimed to have been committed by the accused as constituting her a delinquent child. In the information filed in the instant case, copy of which is attached to the application, it is merely charged that relator is a delinquent and incorrigible child. This is not sufficient, notwithstanding the statute enumerates incorrigibility as one of the things which would constitute delinquency. An incorrigible is one who cannot be reformed, one incapable of reformation, and, stated abstractly and apart from any enumeration of specific acts, such charge would seem to us altogether too indefinite and incapable of proof as applied to any child of tender years, and for whose benefit and reformation this law must have been enacted. Said law proceeds entirely upon the supposition that the reformation of its subjects is possible and probable, and that they are not incorrigible.

The relator will be discharged. 
      <&wkey;For other oases see same topic and KEY-NUMBER in all Key-Numbered Digests and Indexes