Court Opinion

ID: 9865459
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 17:55:28.893874+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:50:08.573942
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing.
In the original opinion filed herein July 27, 1936, the petitioner was remanded to the Circuit Court because it was represented by the petition for habeas corpus that he was tried and convicted without having his parents notified as required by Section 8322, Compiled General Laws of 1927.
On Petition for Rehearing we are admonished to amend pur original opinion by eliminating the order of remand on a showing that a certified copy of the minutes of the trial, attached to the Petition for Rehearing shows that the parents of the petitioner were notified and were present in court at the time of the trial.
The record and minutes of the trial show that petitioner was arrested April 1, 1936, informed against April 8, following, put on trial the same day, and after he was arraigned and entered a plea of guilty without a chance to confer.with parent or any living person, so far as is shown, his age was ascertained whereby sentence was held in abeyance pending notice to his parents. The parents of the petitioner were notified and brought into court by the sheriff from a distance on the same date, the petitioner was then rearraigned, the information read to him again, and he entered' a second time the plea of guilty. The court then asked the petitioner and the father and mother if they had. anything to say why the sentence of the law should not be pronounced. The father responded that the defendant was a youth under age and that he felt that he (petitioner) was led into the crime by older persons. No other response being made, petitioner was sentenced to twenty years in the state penitentiary at hard labor.
*240The statute, Section 8322, Revised General Statutes of 1927, requires that the parents be notified before the trial. The record discloses that the parents of petitioner did not know of the trial until 4:00 o’clock P. M., April 8, after he had been once arraigned and plead guilty, they were then brought into court and a like proceeding was conducted without having a chance to confer with him or so far as the records show, without. knowing any more about the charge against the petitioner than Uncle Remus. The regular terms of the Circuit Court was months in the future and he was indicted and tried the same day at a special term of the Court, having been arrested a week previous.
Such procedure is far short of compliance with the requirement of the statute in such cases. If notification “before trial” does not contemplate an opportunity for the minor to see and confer with his parents then the notification is futile and serves no purpose whatever. It would be idle to have a parent brought in court to see his minor child sentenced to the penitentiary and that was all the purpose the notice served in this case.
The Petition for Rehearing is accordingly denied.
Ellis, P. J., and Terrell and Buford, J. J., concur.
Brown and Davis, J. J., concur in the opinion and judgment.