Ex parte Hays

• Decision Date: 15 January 1897
• Docket Number: 720
• Citation: 47 P. 612,15 Utah 77
• Court: Utah Supreme Court
• Parties: EX PARTE HAYS

47 P. 612

15 Utah 77

EX PARTE HAYS

No. 720

Supreme Court of Utah

January 15, 1897

Application by Harry Hays for a writ of habeas corpus. Denied.

Writ denied, and the prisoner remanded.

Powers Straup & Lippman, for petitioner.

A. C Bishop, Attorney General, and F. B. Stephens, for respondent.

No briefs were filed.

BARTCH J. ZANE, C. J., and MINER, J., concur.

OPINION

BARTCH, J.:

The petitioner in this case on the 1st day of April, 1896, was convicted of the crime of murder in the first degree, and thereafter judgment of death by hanging was pronounced against him; and since then he has been in the custody of the sheriff of Utah county, who justifies his detention of the petitioner by virtue of the death warrant and commitment issued to him by the district court of said county. The warrant and commitment, a copy of which is attached to the petition, appear to be regular and in proper form. He complains that the sentence or judgment by virtue of which he is in confinement is void, because, as he maintains, his trial was not conducted in pursuance of law, and that, therefore, his detention is illegal. The contention of the petitioner is that the jurors who sat in the trial of the case were not drawn pursuant to any valid law of the state; that the act under which they were drawn to serve as jurors was unconstitutional, and was repealed by a later law, which took effect prior to the commencement of the trial; and that as jurors who sat in the trial of the case were summoned under the repealed law, and as the trial was conducted under the later law, an error which is fatal to the judgment and sentence was committed. This case was appealed to this court, but none of these points were presented in that appeal, and the judgment was affirmed. 14 Utah 118, 46 P. 752.

The important and decisive question, which confronts us at the outset, is, can this court, in a collateral proceeding by habeas corpus, look beyond the judgment, and determine questions which arose during the trial of the case, and which, if they had been presented in the record on appeal, might have resulted in a reversal of the judgment? We think not. The warrant appears fair and regular on its face, and that the district court in which the case was tried had jurisdiction of the person and subject-matter is not, and cannot be successfully, questioned. This being so, and that court being a court of record, its judgment is binding upon all the world until reversed in a regular way by appeal. A fortiori is this so after the judgment has been affirmed by this court. Such a judgment is final, and pronounces the law of the case. With what propriety, then, can this court, by means of habeas corpus, substantially reverse a judgment which the law has placed beyond our control? The prisoner's detention under the judgment, the commitment being regular on its face, cannot be unlawful unless that judgment is absolutely null and void; and it cannot be null and void, when the court had general jurisdiction of the person and subject-matter, even though it may have erred in its proceedings during the trial. Irregularities and mere errors in proceedings will not render a judgment an absolute nullity, although they may render it voidable, and when voidable only it is conclusively presumed to be valid until reversed, and it cannot be reversed by habeas corpus, because habeas corpus does not authorize the exercise of appellate jurisdiction; and "no inquiry," says Chancellor Kent, "is to be made into the legality of any process, judgment, or decree, * * * where the party is detained under the final decree or judgment of a competent court." 2 Kent, Comm. 30. The district court being a court of general jurisdiction, the offense charged against the prisoner was cognizable in that court, and it was competent to inflict the punishment provided by law for the offense of which the prisoner was convicted; and its judgment, not being reversed, has all the obligation which the judgment of any tribunal can have.

If the judgment be voidable only, and hence obligatory, because not reversed, we cannot look beyond it on habeas corpus. If it be absolutely void, the officer who detains the prisoner and obeys the judgment is guilty of false imprisonment. Would counsel for the prisoner in this case undertake to maintain the position that the officer is guilty of false imprisonment? Clearly, the detention is authorized by the judgment and warrant, and the imprisonment is not illegal. "The habeas corpus is undoubtedly an immediate remedy for every illegal imprisonment. But no imprisonment is illegal where the process is a justification of the officer; and process, whether by writ or warrant, is legal whenever it is not defective in the frame of it, and has issued, in the ordinary course of justice, from a court or magistrate having jurisdiction of the subject-matter, though there have been error in the proceedings previous to the issuing of it." Com. v. Lecky, 1 Watts 66.

In Ex parte Watkins, 3 Pet. 193, the petitioner was imprisoned by virtue of a judgment of a circuit court of the United States. The motion to discharge was founded on the allegation that the indictment charged no offense for which the prisoner was punishable in that court, and...