Court Opinion

ID: 9841769
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-22 20:05:19.04411+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:04:43.022347
License: Public Domain

The Chief Justice (with whom concurréd
Mu. Justice Hak-laN)
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 Courts 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 orden” 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 juris-, diction 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. „
*150^/Upon this ground, my brother Hablan and myself are of opinion that the judgment should be reversed.
Me. Justice Gray was not present at the argument of this case and took no part in its decision.