Court Opinion

ID: 9582327
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:25:23.45488+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:37:40.233541
License: Public Domain

PEEK, J.
I dissent. I cannot agree with the conclusion reached in the majority opinion. It appears to me that the situation presented in the instant case falls squarely within the rule enunciated by the Supreme Court in People v. Ah Teung, 92 Cal. 421 [28 P. 577, 15 L.R.A. 190], and by the District Court in People v. Clark, 69 Cal.App. 520 [231 P. 590].
In the Ah Teung case the essential facts were that the defendant was convicted of assisting in the escape of a friend who was being held in a county jail at the request of a deputy United States marshal under no formal order or other proper direction. In the Clark case the defendant effected an escape from a county road camp where he was being held under an illegal judgment. The basis of the conclusion of the court in each case is embodied in an excerpt from the opinion in the case of Ah Teung, which is quoted in the majority opinion herein, that
“.'. . An escape is classed as a crime against public justice, and the law, in declaring it to be an offense, proceeds upon the theory that the citizen should yield obedience to the law; that when one has been, by its authority or command, confined in a prison, that it is his duty to submit to such confinement *9until delivered by due course of law, no matter whether he was committed to await a future trial, or as a punishment after judgment of conviction, or for any other purpose authorized by law. But when the imprisonment is unlawful, and is itself a crime, the reason which makes flight from prison an offense does not exist. In such a ease the right to liberty is absolute and he who regains it is not guilty of the technical offense of escape. . . .
“. . . There can be no escape, in the sense of the law, unless there was a lawful custody. ’ ’
However, it also should be noted that the court recognized the distinction between an imprisonment without any process, and wholly without authority of law, and an imprisonment under a process which is simply irregular in form. On this point the court stated at page 426 as follows:
“Indeed, for a mere irregularity in the form of a warrant or commitment, the court would not be authorized to discharge a prisoner on habeas corpus (Pen. Code, see. 1488), and much less would the prisoner himself be justified in treating it with contempt, as he might do if it were wholly void and incapable of amendment.”
The rule so enunciated, together with the distinction made therein, which is the majority rule (see 56 A.L.R. 666; 163 A.L.R. 1137), has been neither modified nor disapproved by our Supreme Court.
Thus it seems to me that the one issue presented herein is dependent solely upon the question as to whether the imprisonment of the defendant, following a criminal proceeding in which he was not advised of his constitutional rights, was such an unlawful imprisonment that his departure from confinement did not constitute an escape within the rule laid down in the Ah Teung and Clark cases.
The Supreme Court of the United States has emphatically declared [subject to certain qualifications not present in the instant case] that the failure to strictly comply with the terms of the Sixth Amendment to the federal Constitution results in the court losing jurisdiction to proceed and that the judgment of conviction pronounced by “a court without jurisdiction is void.” (Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458 [58 S.Ct. 1019, 82 L.Ed. 1461].) The courts of this state have approved a like interpretation of the provisions of article I, section 13, of our Constitution. (People v. Lanigan, 22 Cal.2d *10569 [140 P.2d 24,148 A.L.R 176]; In re Jones, 88 Cal.App.2d 167 [198 P.2d 520]; see, also, 3 A.L.R.2d 1003.)
Applying this constitutional rule to the sole question presented in the instant case it would appear that if the reason which makes flight from prison an offense did not exist in the Ah Teung ease because defendant’s custody by the sheriff was without process and therefore void, and if in the Clark case such reason did not exist because the process under which the defendant was held was illegal and gave the sheriff no legal authority to hold him, how then can it be said that in the present ease the reason which makes flight from prison an offense did exist, since under the cited cases the defendants’ conviction was void, and since the court, in the Ah Teung case specifically held that “there can be no escape, in the sense of the law, unless there was a lawful custody. ’ ’
Neither the decision of this court in the Jones case nor of the Supreme Court in the McCoy case (32 Cal.2d 73), both of which are cited and relied upon as the basis for the conclusion reached in the majority opinion, militates against the foregoing conclusion. Neither case involved the question presented herein, to wit: escape, and therefore cannot be considered either as directly or impliedly overruling the decision in the Ah Teung case. In fact it was not even mentioned in either of the two later cases so cited. On the contrary both of those cases support the foregoing conclusion inasmuch as the judgments therein were referred to as being void. Although the defendant in each case was remanded to the trial court for further proceedings such remand was not based upon any process issued by the trial court but, as stated in the McCoy case, was predicated upon the authority of the reviewing court under section 1484 of the Penal Code, which places upon the court or judge in a habeas corpus proceeding the obligation “to dispose of such party as the justice of the case may require . . ..”
Furthermore I find nothing in the rule enunciated in the federal cases cited in the majority opinion which is applicable here. Not alone because I am convinced that the question has been answered both fully and specifically by the courts of this state but also because of the particular statutes under which those eases arose.
So long as the law as enunciated in the Ah Teung case remains unchanged the courts of this state are bound to adhere to it, and I would therefore reverse the judgment.