Ex parte State of Alabama

• Decision Date: 12 January 1897
• Parties: EX PARTE STATE OF ALABAMA. IN RE STEPHENSON.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

21 So. 210

113 Ala. 85

EX PARTE STATE OF ALABAMA. IN RE STEPHENSON.

Supreme Court of Alabama

January 12, 1897

This was a petition by the state, addressed to the judges of the supreme court, asking for the alternative writ of mandamus to the judge of the city court of Montgomery, commanding him to show cause why the order made by him, striking from the trial docket of his said court the case of the state of Alabama against Noah Stephenson, should not be vacated and annulled and said cause re-entered on said trial docket. Denied.

Gunter & Gunter, for petitioner.

Tennent Lomax and W. C. Fitts, Atty. Gen., for the State.

BRICKELL C.J.

There have been but few applications made on behalf of the state for remedial writs to correct errors intervening, or supposed to have intervened, in the course of the proceedings of inferior courts in the exercise of criminal jurisdiction. Such application must be made in the name of the state, and must be made by and through the attorney general. There is no other officer entitled to use the name and authority of the state. In the two cases, Ex parte State of Alabama, 71 Ala 363, and Ex parte State of Alabama, In re Merlet Id. 371, the application was made in the name of "The State of Alabama, by its Attorney General," and bore the signature and official designation of the attorney general. The petition addressed to the court in this case has a caption preceding the address: "Ex parte the State of Alabama, In re Noah Stephenson." In the body of the petition the state is not nominated as a party, and it is signed by the solicitor for the county of Montgomery. The motion entered on the docket reads: "Comes Tennent Lomax, solicitor," etc., "who prosecutes for the state of Alabama,"-and is signed by the solicitor. A statutory duty of the attorney general is to "attend on the part of the state, to all criminal cases pending in the supreme court, and to all civil cases in which the state is a party in the same court." Code, § 127. It is manifest that this tribunal can recognize no other representative of the state than the attorney general. Whether the state has an interest in the vacation of the order made in a criminal case by a court of competent jurisdiction, or whether there shall be a prohibition of the exercise of jurisdiction, or any other remedial writ prosecuted by the state,-at all times a matter of more or less gravity,-the law commits to the judgment and...