Source: http://openjurist.org/print/25260
Timestamp: 2015-08-31 21:54:31
Document Index: 337661203

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 466', '§ 466', '§ 466', '§ 240', '§ 347', '§ 347', '§ 262', '§ 377', '§ 377']

324 US 42 House v. Mayo
Home > 324 US 42 House v. Mayo
324 US 42 House v. Mayo 324 U.S. 42
65 S.Ct. 517
89 L.Ed. 739
HOUSEv.MAYO, State Prison Custodian.
See 324 U.S. 886, 65 S.Ct. 689.
Petitioner is confined in the Florida state prison under sentence for burglary. He filed a petition for habeas corpus in the United States District Court for Southern Florida, which denied the petition without calling for a return and without a hearing. The district judge also denied a certificate of probable cause for an appeal to the circuit court of appeals under 28 U.S.C. § 466, 28 U.S.C.A. § 466. Section 466 requires such a certificate for an appeal from a judgment denying a petition for habeas corpus when the petition complains of 'detention * * * by virtue of process issued out of a State court.' Since the statute authorizes either the district court or 'a judge of the circuit court of appeals' to issue the certificate, the district judge, in his order, stated that petitioner might apply to a judge of the court of appeals for the certificate and for the allowance of his appeal.
Petitioner thereupon filed with the circuit court of appeals a timely application for an appeal in forma pauperis, addressed to the 'Chief Justice' of that court. The application was submitted to the court and by it denied, 147 F.2d 606, on the grounds that petitioner had not presented the certificate of probable cause required by § 466, and that the district judge, on the contrary, had found that no probable cause existed. The court did not consider whether the case was one requiring it or a circuit judge to make the certificate of probable cause.
This Court cannot issue a writ of certiorari in the present case under § 240(a) of the Judicial Code, 28 U.S.C. § 347(a), 28 U.S.C.A. § 347(a). Ferguson v. District of Columbia, 270 U.S. 633, 657, 46 S.Ct. 355, 70 L.Ed. 771. Our authority under that section extends only to cases 'in a circuit court of appeals, or in the (United States) Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.' Here the case was never 'in' the court of appeals, for want of a certificate of probable cause.
But § 262 of the Judicial Code, 28 U.S.C. § 377, 28 U.S.C.A. § 377, authorizes this Co