Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/134/136/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 04:16:47+00:00

Document:
When it is found by a circuit court of the United States that the clerk has failed to put in the record an order which was made at the next preceding term of the court remanding a case to the district court, the circuit court may direct such an order to be entered nunc pro tunc.
The writ of habeas corpus cannot be used as a writ of error to inquire into all the errors committed by the court below.
"he did wrongfully secrete and embezzle a letter which came into his possession in the regular course of his official duties, and which was intended to be carried by a letter carrier, which letter then and there contained five pecuniary obligations and securities of the government of the United States"
is a sufficient charge that the letter embezzled was intended to be carried by a letter carrier of the United States.
In an indictment against a letter carrier for the embezzlement of a letter received by him in his official character to carry and deliver, it is not necessary to aver that "the letter has not been delivered" if an embezzlement of it is charged.
In a proceeding for a habeas corpus to release from confinement a letter carrier charged with embezzling letters delivered to him for carriage, this Court will not inquire into the motives with which the letter was put into the mail, even though the object was to detect or entrap the party into criminal practices.
This was a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The writ was refused in the court below, and the petitioner appealed. The case is stated in the opinion.
which were intended to be carried by a letter carrier, and which letters contained obligations and securities of the United States of pecuniary value called treasury notes. There were six other counts for a similar offense.
"It is now by the court ordered that this case be certified and remitted to the next Circuit Court of the United States for this district."
"In this cause the defendant's motions to set aside verdict and in arrest of judgment, after mature deliberation thereon, are by the court here now denied."
"v. Convicted on indictment for "
"Charles Wight embezzling letters, etc."
and the same is hereby, vacated as having been improvidently made. And the said defendant, being now placed at the bar of the court for sentence, thereupon the court do now sentence him, the said Charles Wight, to be imprisoned and kept at hard labor at and in the Detroit House of Correction, in the City of Detroit, Wayne county, Michigan, for the term of two years from and including this day, and to stand committed until the terms of this sentence are complied with."
the United States, as more fully and at length alleged and shown by the certified copies of the proceedings in said cause in the petition filed in this matter.
Petitioner Wight also averred that the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Michigan never had or obtained jurisdiction over him, for the following reasons: that the indictment on which petitioner was arraigned and tried in said court did not charge the commission of any offense over which said court had jurisdiction, and because the evidence in the case did not establish any offense against the laws of the United States of which said district court had jurisdiction.
March, remitting said cause out of this court into the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Michigan; therefore, after hearing the said Charles Wight, by his counsel, in opposition thereto, this court, upon its own motion, based upon its recollection of the facts of the making of said order remitting said cause as aforesaid into said district court, now orders and directs that the same be entered now as of the said twelfth day of March, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine, according to the facts thereof, which are as follows: at a session of the Circuit Court of the United States for the Sixth Circuit and Eastern District of Michigan, continued and held, pursuant to adjournment at the district court room, in the City of Detroit, on the twelfth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine."
"Present: The Hon. Howell E. Jackson, Circuit Judge; the Hon. Henry B. Brown, District Judge."
The defendant being personally present in court as well as by his counsel, Henry M. Duffield, Esq., said United States being represented by C. P. Black United States Attorney, and Charles T. Wilkins, Assistant United States Attorney, and the said United States Attorney objecting to the consideration of said cause on the part of this court for the reason that there was no authority in law for the district court to remit said cause to this court after verdict had in said district court, therefore the court, upon its own motion, hereby remits said cause back into the said District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan for such action as said district court shall see fit to take.
court, and being further of opinion, as appears from their judgment in the matter, that the case had never been lawfully removed from the district into the circuit court, and that therefore said district court had always retained jurisdiction of the case, made an order discharging the writ of habeas corpus.
It is mainly upon these orders about the several removals of the case from one court into the other that appellant relies to show that the district court, at the time of pronouncing its judgment of imprisonment against appellant, had no jurisdiction of the case. But there is also a further point made, that the letters which the appellant embezzled were never put into the mail with intent that they should be carried within the meaning of the statute.
Of course, if the judge of the district court is right in the opinion expressed by him in the orders which he made, that he had no power, after the verdict in the district court, to transfer it to the circuit court, then the case had really never been withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the district court, and the question arising upon the absence of any record in the circuit court of an order remanding it back to the district court is of no consequence, because all that was done in the circuit court in that view was without jurisdiction, and the case never was lawfully in that court, and the district court had the right to make the order which it did make, setting aside its former order transferring the case to the circuit court. In this view of the subject, the case having always been really under the jurisdiction and control of the district court, its judgment sentencing the prisoner on the verdict was within its power, and is not examinable on this writ of habeas corpus.
But we are not satisfied that this view of the powers of the two courts is a sound one. While we do not decide the question now, because it is not necessary -- as our judgment is the same in either event -- we shall, for the purposes of the present case, treat it as if the order transferring the case from the district court into the circuit court was a valid order, so that it could only be remanded from the circuit court into the district court by some order or action of the former.
No such order was found upon the records of the circuit court at the time sentence was imposed upon the prisoner in the district court. If no such order had been made previous to that judgment, the case was still pending in the circuit court, and the district court had no authority to pass the sentence it did upon the prisoner. This view of the subject calls upon us to inquire whether the nunc pro tunc order of September 30th was a valid order, and one within the power of the circuit court to make.
Our first impression was that whatever might be the powers of the courts in this regard over their records during the term in which the transactions are supposed to have occurred, the record of which, or failure to make any record of which, is the subject of amendment, yet, when it was attempted to do this after an adjournment, and at a subsequent term of the court, the powers of the court in making such changes in the records of the proceedings were limited to those in which there remained written memoranda of some kind in the case, and among the files of the court, by which the record could be amended, if erroneous, or the proper entry could be supplied, if one had been omitted. And especially that in criminal procedure, this power to make such entries at a subsequent term of the court of what had transpired at a former term as would establish the authority of the court to pass a sentence of fine or imprisonment either did not exist at all or, if it did, was limited to cases in which some written evidence of what was done remained in the papers connected with the case.
transpired at the preceding term. But this refers to the power of the clerk, proceeding of his own motion. The court may order 'nunc pro tunc entries,' as they are called, made to supply some omission in the entry of what was done at the preceding term, yet this is a power the extent of which is limited, and not easily defined. In general, mere clerical errors may be amended in this way. So of the mistake of the clerk in the name of the judge before whom the indictment was found."
The present case comes within the clause of this section which declares the power of the court to make nunc pro tunc entries to supply some omission in the record of what was done at the time of the proceedings. An extensive list of authorities is cited in the footnote of Mr. Bishop, and among those which support the power of the court to make a record of some matter which was done at a former term, of which the clerk had made no entry, the following cases directly affirm that proposition: Galloway v. McKeithen, 5 Iredell 12; Hyde v. Curling, 10 Mo. 227; State v. Clark, 18 Mo. 432; Nelson v. Barker, 3 McLean 379; Bilansky v. State, 3 Minn. 427.
"although we have granted to our justices to make record of pleas pleaded before them, yet we will not that their own records shall be a warranty for their own wrong, nor that they may raze their rolls, nor amend them, nor record them contrary to their original enrollment."
This, Blackstone declares, meant only that the justices should not by their own private erasure change a record already made up, or alter the truth to any sinister purpose.
"While we would go as far as any court in reprobating a rule which would place the proceedings of a court almost entirely at the mercy of the subordinate officers thereof, we would be scrupulously careful in adopting any rule which would tend to destroy the sanctity or lessen the verity of records. And while we admit the power to amend a record after the term has passed in which the record was made up, we would deprecate the exercise of the power in any case where there was the least room for doubt about the facts upon which the amendment was sought to be made. . . . But when the facts stand undisputed, and the objection is based upon the technical point alone that the term is passed at which the record was made up, it would be doing violence to the spirit which pervades the administration of justice in the present age to sustain it. It is our opinion that this power, of necessity, exists in the district court, and that its exercise must in a great measure be governed by the facts of each case."
The case in 5 Iredell, although a civil suit, established the doctrine that a court has a right to amend the records of any preceding term by inserting what had been omitted either by the act of the court or clerk, and that when so amended, it stands as if it had never been defective or as if the entries had been made at the proper time.
has omitted to make an order which it might or ought to have made, it cannot at a subsequent term be made nunc pro tunc."
In the case in 18 Mo. of State v Clark, it appeared that the prisoner had been tried on an indictment which was not signed at the time of the trial by the foreman as a true bill, and that the clerk had not marked the time of filing the same on the indictment. It was held, on writ of error to the supreme court, that the court had a right, on motion at a subsequent term, to amend its record by a statement of these facts not only by the endorsement upon the bill, but by a regular entry on the journal, that "the grand jury returned into court the following true bills of indictment," naming the one under which the defendant was convicted. The court said that if these acts had taken place, the failure of the clerk to make proper and formal entries on the records of the court might have been supplied or corrected by having such entries made nunc pro tunc.
In Nelson v. Barker, 3 McLean 379, Mr. Justice McLean observed, in regard to an amendment of a declaration under a plea of misnomer, that it was objected to on the ground that there was nothing to amend by, to which he replied that at common law the court could only give leave to amend when there was something to amend by, and anciently amendments were required to be made at the term at which the error occurred, but now an amendment may be made at any time before judgment, and in some cases after judgment, and he refers to the thirty-second section of the Judiciary Act of 1789.
This, which has been commonly called the "statute of jeofails and amendments of the United States," may be found in section 954, Revised Statutes, and is as liberal in the powers which it confers on the courts to make amendments as any of those enacted in more modern times. We are forced to the conclusion that the action of the circuit court in making the order for a nunc pro tunc record, which showed that the case had been remanded from that court to the district court prior to the time when the sentence was passed upon the prisoner, was a legitimate exercise of power.
"the said Wight, who was then and there a person employed in one of the departments of the postal service of the United States, to-wit, employed as an assistant to the superintendent of letter carriers in the post office at Detroit aforesaid, unlawfully and wrongfully did secrete and embezzle a letter which came into his possession in the regular course of his official duties, and which was intended to be carried by a letter carrier, which letter then and there contained five pecuniary obligations and securities of the government of the United States,"
and were the property of one Angus M. Smith, and with the letter were then and there enclosed in an envelope addressed to "Oscar Singleton, Montevideo, Cook Co., Mich." A similar statement is in effect made in all the other counts.
shall be punishable by imprisonment at hard labor for not less than one year nor more than five years."
The argument of counsel assumes that in this proceeding by writ of habeas corpus we can inquire into and correct nearly all errors which may have been committed by the district court in the control of the case originally. This has been so often denied by this Court, and the proposition is so clear that in a writ of habeas corpus nothing can be inquired into but the jurisdiction of the court, that it is unnecessary to pursue the entire line of argument of counsel for appellant. Cuddy, Petitioner, 131 U. S. 280. We are of opinion, notwithstanding the allegation of counsel that there was no jurisdiction because the indictment did not charge that the letter embezzled was intended to be carried by a letter carrier, that it so alleged in the exact terms of the statute just cited, and is therefore sufficient.
"that the failure to allege in some of these indictments that the letter had not been delivered to the party to whom it is directed renders the whole proceeding void,"
THE CHIEF JUSTICE (with whom concurred MR. JUSTICE HARLAN), dissenting.
I am compelled to withhold my assent to the conclusion reached by the Court in this case. In my judgment, the district court had power after the verdict to transfer the cause to the circuit court, and, having done so, it required an order remitting the cause from the circuit court to the district court before the latter court could pronounce a lawful sentence. The petitioner was sentenced by the district court, which, as the record then stood, had no jurisdiction, and was committed accordingly, and while undergoing imprisonment under that sentence sued out the writ of habeas corpus. The circuit court then entered an order nunc pro tunc as of the previous term, remitting the cause into the district court, basing its action upon "its recollection of the facts of the making of said order." The record before us does not disclose the existence of any minutes of the clerk or notes of the judge that the entry of such an order had been directed or of any other official evidence to that effect, and I do not understand it to be contended that there was any such. Granting that, as has been said, the judge during the term is a living record, and may alter and supply from memory any order, judgment, or decree which has been pronounced -- and this because he is presumed to retain his own action in his recollection -- yet after the term has elapsed, the exercise of such a power to the extent of supplying an order upon which jurisdiction depends, in the absence of any entry, minute, or memorandum to proceed by, or of any statutory provision expressly allowing it, ought not to be conceded in criminal cases. The statute of amendments and jeofails has no application.
Upon this ground, my brother HARLAN and myself are of opinion that the judgment should be reversed.
MR. JUSTICE GRAY did not sit in the argument of this case, and took no part in its decision.

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