Hooker v. Boles
| Decision Date | 31 May 1965 |
| Docket Number | No. 9823.,9823. |
| Citation | 346 F.2d 285 |
| Parties | John Harry HOOKER, Appellant, v. Otto C. BOLES, Warden of the West Virginia State Penitentiary, Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Arthur T. Ciccarello, Charleston, W. Va., for appellant.
George H. Mitchell, Asst. Atty. Gen. of West Virginia, (C. Donald Robertson, Atty. Gen. of West Virginia, on brief), for appellee.
Before SOBELOFF and BOREMAN, Circuit Judges, and STANLEY, District Judge.
Petitioner, John Harry Hooker, appeals from a judgment of the District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia dismissing, after a hearing, his habeas corpus petition. For reasons hereinafter stated, we think the judgment must be reversed.
On June 29, 1955, petitioner was found guilty of breaking and entering, the maximum penalty for which offense was confinement in the penitentiary for a period of ten years. When the jury verdict was returned, petitioner's employed counsel made a motion to set it aside and grant a new trial. The court set the motion down for argument on July 5. According to the District Court's findings of fact, the state court at that time sentenced petitioner for an indeterminate term of from one to ten years in the state penitentiary as provided by statute. W.Va.Code § 5953 (Michie 1961).1 On the same day, June 29, the prosecuting attorney tendered for filing an information charging petitioner with two prior felony convictions. The information was not then received by the court, but a copy of it was given to petitioner's attorney. Under the state habitual criminal statute, these prior convictions, if admitted by petitioner or if he denied them and the state proved to the satisfaction of a jury that he was the same person charged in the information, would compel the court to sentence petitioner to imprisonment for the remainder of his natural life. W.Va.Code §§ 6130 and 6131 (Michie 1961).
On July 5 the court heard arguments on petitioner's motion for a new trial which motion was immediately denied. Thereupon, the prosecuting attorney again presented the recidivist information which the court accepted. Thereupon, the court directed petitioner to the witness stand and asked him if he was the same person charged in the information with having been convicted of the prior offenses. Petitioner admitted that he was and the court proceeded to sentence him to prison for life.
In his petition for habeas corpus filed in the District Court, petitioner alleged that the life sentence was void as the state court was without jurisdiction because it failed to "duly caution" him of his rights as required by the recidivist statute and that such failure was a denial of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The District Court specifically found that the state court did not inform petitioner of the nature and effect of the proceedings nor caution him as to his rights to remain silent and to a jury trial on the issue of his identity. It denied petitioner relief, however, on the ground that petitioner's attorney, after receiving a copy of the information, had fully and plainly informed him of the nature of the recidivist proceeding and of his rights under the statute and that due process did not require the court to perform a supererogatory act of reiteration.
Regardless of the fundamental fairness required in a proceeding to constitute due process of law, no authority need be cited for the proposition that, when a court lacks jurisdiction, any judgment rendered by it is void and unenforceable. We think the state court in the present situation was without jurisdiction to impose a life sentence on the petitioner based on the statute in question. The jurisdiction of a trial court in West Virginia to impose upon a person convicted of a crime a sentence in addition to and in excess of the statutory penalty provided for the substantive offense of which he stands convicted depends upon and derives from the recidivist statute. State ex rel. Beckett v. Boles, 138 S.E.2d 851 (W.Va.1964). That statute requires that, before a convicted person acknowledges in open court that he has been convicted of prior offenses charged against him in an information filed by the prosecuting attorney, he be "duly cautioned" and in Spry v. Boles, 4 Cir., 299 F.2d 332 (1962), this court held, based on West Virginia law, that this requirement is jurisdictionally mandatory. A reasonable construction of that statute in our view required the trial court to "duly caution" the convicted person to preserve its jurisdiction. As the trial court failed to "duly caution" petitioner within the meaning of the statute, the life sentence is void.
This construction is supported by the West...
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State ex rel. Smith v. Boles
...required by the statute, Code, 61-11-19, as amended, before the additional sentence was imposed. The recent case of Hocker v. Boles, Warden, 4 Cir., 346 F.2d 285, (decided May 31, 1965), also relied on by the petitioner to support his contention with regard to not being duly cautioned, is q......
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Vance v. Hedrick
...granted. REVERSED. * Honorable Norman P. Ramsey, District Judge for the District of Maryland, sitting by designation.1 Hooker v. Boles, 346 F.2d 285 (4th Cir. 1965); Spry v. Boles, 299 F.2d 332 (4th Cir. 1962).2 It was wholly unnecessary to the result of Albright, of course, to have charact......
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State ex rel. McClure v. Boles
...to undertake to delegate the performance of that duty to any other person. State ex rel. Beckett v. Boles, W.Va. 138 S.E.2d 851; Hooker v. Boles, 346 F.2d 285, fourth circuit, decided May 31, 1965; Mounts v. Boles, 326 F.2d 186, fourth circuit; Spry v. Boles, 299 F.2d 332, fourth circuit. S......
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Meadows v. Boles, Civ. A. No. 544-E.
...requirements of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment and would, of course, merit federal habeas corpus relief. Hooker v. Boles, 346 F.2d 285 (4th Cir. 1965), at 287. The main issue in such habeas corpus proceedings, as it has evolved in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, is whether ......