Court Opinion

ID: 9588029
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:29:03.010742+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:47:51.536488
License: Public Domain

*775Calhoun, Judge,
concurring:
State ex rel. Robert Vandal v. Adams, Warden, etc., 145 W. Va. 566, 115 S. E. 2d 489, State ex rel. Melvin Gerst v. Adams, Warden, etc., 145 W. Va. 580, 115 S. E. 2d 496 and State ex rel. John Soto v. Adams, Warden, etc., 145 W. Va. 591, 115 S. E. 2d 497 involved three persons jointly indicted for a felony. By the decisions in those cases, this Court, by habeas corpus, released three men from the state penitentiary merely because the indictment failed to charge that the offense was committed “feloniously.” In a dissenting opinion in the Vandal case, I undertook to state the reasons for my earnest belief that the majority opinion was indefensible from the standpoint of law, reason, common sense or reality. I still entertain the same belief just as earnestly as before.
The opinion in the present case quotes from the Virginia case of Barker v. Commonwealth, decided in 1817, for the proposition that “it is error” to omit the word “feloniously” from a felony indictment. In justice to the court which rendered that decision, I feel that it should be observed that the same court, more than a century later, has renounced that proposition and has held that it is not even “error” to fail to charge in an indictment for a statutory felony that the offense was committed feloniously, unless such word constitutes a part of the statutory definition of the offense. Jolly v. Commonwealth, 136 Va. 756, 118 S. E. 109; Staples v. Commonwealth, 140 Va. 583, 125 S. E. 319. So, I believe, the flimsy foundation upon which the Vandal case was doubtfully constructed has crumbled. With assurance, I assert that the Vandal case is without precedent in this state or Virginia for the proposition that, in the absence of a demurrer, motion to quash, appeal or any other direct proceeding, a court is required, in a collateral attack by habeas corpus, to release a prisoner from the penitentiary merely because of the failure of the indictment to charge that the felony clearly alleged was committed “feloniously.” I seriously doubt that there is substantial precedent for the Vandal case anywhere in this land or in England. By that decision, I fear that we may enjoy the unenviable distinction *776of being heedless pioneers in a trackless area of empty technicality.
I concur, nevertheless, in the opinion in the present case merely because I feel that it states the law of this state as established by the majority opinions in the three previous cases to which I have referred.