Edwards v. Commonwealth
| Decision Date | 15 November 1883 |
| Parties | EDWARDS v. THE COMMONWEALTH. ANDERSON v. THE COMMONWEALTH. |
| Court | Virginia Supreme Court |
Error to judgment of circuit court of Richmond, rendered 6th July 1883, upon an information against Washington Edwards, a convict in the penitentiary, alleging that he was on the 10th of March, 1881, duly convicted of a felony in the corporation court of Danville, and sentenced and received into the penitentiary for a term of one year; and that afterwards to-wit: on 5th of March, 1883, in said corporation court said Edwards was duly convicted of another felony, and sentenced and received into said penitentiary for a term of five years; and that said Edwards had not been sentenced to the punishment prescribed by law for said second offence; and praying due process of law requiring said Edwards to make answer touching the premises as required by the act of assembly in such case provided. And said Edwards in proper person made answer that the information should not be prosecuted against him, because on the 25th of April, 1882 the governor of this Commonwealth did grant unto him a pardon for the first offence in the information mentioned. To this special plea the attorney for the Commonwealth demurred; which demurrer the circuit court sustained; whereupon the prisoner moved in arrest of judgment, which motion the court overruled, and the prisoner excepted. Then the prisoner in open court admitting that he was the person named in the information, the court considered that he undergo a further confinement in the penitentiary for the term of five years, commencing from the expiration of his present term. To which judgment the prisoner excepted, and obtained from one of the judges of this court a writ of error. The facts and proceedings in the case of Burgess Anderson are substantially the same, and both cases were heard together.
George Bryan, for the prisoners.
F. S. Blair, Attorney-General, for the Commonwealth.
LEWIS, P.
The statute provides that when a person is convicted of an offence and sentenced to confinement therefor in the penitentiary, and it appears in the manner prescribed that he has before been sentenced in the United States to a like punishment, a term of five years confinement shall be added to the term for which he is or would be otherwise sentenced. Code 1873, ch. 195, § 25; Acts of Assembly 1877-78, p. 315, § 25.
At the March term, 1883, of the corporation court of the town of Danville, the plaintiff in error was convicted of a felony, and sentenced to imprisonment therefor in the penitentiary. On the 6th day of July following, under the provisions of chapter 208 of the Code (now Acts of Assembly 1877-78, p. 371) he was arraigned in the circuit court of the city of Richmond, upon an information filed by the attorney for the Commonwealth, alleging that he had been convicted of a felony in the said corporation court on the 9th day of March, 1881, and sentenced therefor to imprisonment in the penitentiary. The information was filed upon information given to the said circuit court by the superintendent of the penitentiary, in whose custody the accused then was in pursuance of the sentence pronounced by the said corporation court at its March term, 1883. The accused, upon his arraignment, pleaded in bar of the proceedings a full pardon of the governor for the first offence, which was granted on the 25th day of April, 1882. The attorney for the Commonwealth demurred to the plea, and the demurrer was sustained, and the accused afterwards sentenced to undergo a further confinement in the penitentiary for the term of five years, commencing from the expiration of the term of confinement he was then undergoing.
The single question now to be determined relates to the operation and effect of the pardon relied on.
A pardon is defined to be a remission of guilt. Its effect, under the English law, is thus stated by Hawkins in his Pleas of the Crown: " The pardon of a treason or felony, even after a conviction or attainder, does so far clear the party from the infamy of all other consequences of his crime that he may not only have an action for a scandal in calling him traitor or felon after the time of the pardon, but may also be a good witness notwithstanding the attainder or conviction; because the pardon makes him, as it were, a new man."
In the early case of Cuddington v. Wilkins, Hobart, 81, the plaintiff brought an action against the defendant for denouncing him as a thief. The defendendant pleaded that the plaintiff had been guilty of stealing six sheep. The plaintiff replied that after the felony and before the publication of the objectionable words he had been pardoned by a general pardon. Upon demurrer the replication was held good. The whole court were of...
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Snyder v. City of Alexandria
...83 Va. 51, 58, 1 S.E. 512 (1887) (upholding jury's verdict in case where juror with felony conviction had been pardoned); Edwards v. Commonwealth, 78 Va. 39, 44 (1883) (holding that pardon relieves the recipient, upon subsequent conviction of another crime, of the additional punishment prov......
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Jamison v. Flanner
...under habitual-criminal statutes where a pardon had been issued for the first offense (Tucker v. State, 14 Okla. Cr. 54; Edwards v. The Commonwealth, 78 Va. 39; Henderson v. State, 55 Fla. 36; Mount Commonwealth, 63 Ky. 93; People v. M'Intyre, 163 N.Y.S. 528); in a suit for divorce where th......
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State v. Clifton
...2 So.2d 189 (1941); State v. Lee, 171 La. 744, 132 So. 219 (1931); State v. Martin, 59 Ohio St. 212, 52 N.E. 188 (1898); Edwards v. Commonwealth, 78 Va. 39 (1883). Courts following this view have reasoned that the additional punishment imposed on a subsequent offense is not done because the......
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Blount v. Clarke, Record No. 151017.
...annexed to that offence for which he obtain[ed] his pardon." 4 William Blackstone, Commentaries *402. Compare Edwards v. Commonwealth, 78 Va. 39, 41–42 (1883), with Prichard v. Battle, 178 Va. 455, 465–66, 17 S.E.2d 393, 397 (1941).A conditional pardon required the satisfaction of a conditi......