Hardwick v. Gooding
| Decision Date | 18 November 1974 |
| Docket Number | No. 29321,29321 |
| Citation | 210 S.E.2d 794,233 Ga. 322 |
| Parties | Bobby HARDWICK v. Millard GOODING. |
| Court | Georgia Supreme Court |
John H. Ruffin, Jr., Augusta, for appellant.
Richard E. Allen, Dist. Atty., Richard L. Powell, Asst. Dist. Atty., Congdon, Williams & Daniel, Robert C. Daniel, Jr., Augusta, for appellee.
Syllabus Opinion by the Court
On May 24, 1974, at a hearing in Richmond County Superior Court on Hardwick's petition for habeas corpus, his attorney requested a continuance for lack of preparedness, which request was denied, and the hearing proceeded. Hardwick, claiming unpreparedness, put up no evidence, and the court denied the relief requested and remanded him to custody. On this appeal he enumerates as error the refusal of his request for a continuance and the denial of the relief requested in the petition.
It is true, as the county attorney argues, that the petition on which the hearing was held was identical to one filed months earlier by Hardwick, pro se, except for the designation of the respondent. At the hearing on May 24, Hardwick's attorney dismissed the earlier petition which named the head jailor of the Richmond County jail as respondent, and filed a similar petition incorporating the same allegations and substituting as respondent the warden of the Richmond County Correctional Institute in which Hardwick was then incarcerated. Therefore, if nothing else appeared, we might well be persuaded that no unfairness inhered in the superior court's moving immediately, on that same day, to hold a hearing on the new petition. However, countervailing considerations do appear and we are convinced that 'the ends of justice . . . require' granting the continuance sought. See Code Ann. § 81-1419.
The record shows that the initial, pro se petition was filed in Richmond County Superior Court, yet somehow during the pendency of that petition Hardwick was transferred out of the county to the Reidsville State Prison at which location, he alleges, he was beyond the effective reach of his attorney. The record contains an order by that court dated March 14, 1974, holding the transfer to have been knowingly and unlawfully made, and ordering the warden of the Reidsville State Prison to transfer him back to Richmond County. A further order of that court, dated May 16, 1974, reflects that Hardwick had not yet been transferred back to Richmond County, and again ordered his transfer in time to appear at...
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Davis v. Thomas
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...beating he is unable to represent his client on that day, the "ends of justice" require that the motion be granted. Hardwick v. Gooding, 233 Ga. 322, 210 S.E.2d 794 (1974); Code Ann. § 81-1419. It was error to overrule the motion for postponement, to accept the pleas of guilty thereafter, a......