Hudson v. Youell, Record No. 2494.
| Decision Date | 24 November 1941 |
| Docket Number | Record No. 2494. |
| Citation | 178 Va. 525 |
| Parties | WILLIAM P. HUDSON v. RICE M. YOUELL, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE VIRGINIA STATE PENITENTIARY. |
| Court | Virginia Supreme Court |
1. SENTENCE AND PUNISHMENT — Imprisonment — Under Which Sentence Imprisoned. — A prisoner is entitled to know under what sentence he is imprisoned.
2. SENTENCE AND PUNISHMENT — Sentence — Must Not Be Ambiguous or Open to Misapprehension. — A sentence must be certain, definite and consistent in all its terms, and not ambiguous, and not be open to any serious misapprehensions by those who must execute it.
3. SENTENCE AND PUNISHMENT — Punishment — When Terms of Confinement Run Concurrently. — Where sentence is imposed on two or more counts of an indictment and the language of the sentences is too ambiguous to be otherwise construed, it will be construed as providing that the sentences shall run concurrently. If, in a single judgment entry, a defendant is given more than one sentence in the same penitentiary for different offenses, set out in separate indictments and tried together, and there is no direction as to the order of service, the sentences are to be regarded as running concurrently.
4. SENTENCE AND PUNISHMENT — Punishment — Terms of Confinement Held to Run Concurrently — Case at Bar. — In the instant case, a convict instituted habeas corpus proceedings in the trial court against the superintendent of the state penitentiary, contending that the order sentencing him to the penitentiary was insufficient to hold him in custody for more than five years. A single judgment had been pronounced against petitioner on five indictments, one for attempted murder and four for burglary. The judgment did not state the sequence of the terms of servitude for the four burglaries and contained no language from which such sequence might be inferred but simply provided that the petitioner be "confined in the penitentiary for one term of one year and four terms of five years each, said terms to run consecutively, making a total of twenty-one years, * * *." Section 5019 of the Code of 1936 provides that "the term of confinement * * * in the penitentiary for the commission of a crime shall commence and be computed from the date of the final judgment."
Held: That petitioner would be compelled to serve, first, the one year sentence for attempted murder and then the sentences pronounced against him for the four burglaries, but, since the judgment did not state the sequence of the terms of servitude for the four burglaries and contained no language from which such sequence might be inferred, the mandate of section 5019 of the Code of 1936 controlled and the sentences as to the burglaries necessarily ran concurrently.
5. PARDON — Conditional Pardon — Procedure to Establish Breach. — Where there is no statute regulating the proceedings to be instituted to establish the breach in a pardon granted to a person serving time in jail or in the penitentiary, and the pardon contains no stipulation reserving to the governor the power, after hearing, to declare a breach of the conditions imposed, the established practice is for the trial court, upon the matter being brought to its attention, to issue a rule reciting the original judgment of conviction and sentence, the pardon and its conditions, and the alleged violation of or non-compliance with the conditions, and commanding the sheriff to arrest the convict and bring him before the court to show cause, if any he can, why the original sentence imposed upon him should not be executed.
6. PARDON — Conditional Pardon — Procedure upon Breach — Case at Bar. — In the instant case, a petition for habeas corpus by a convict against the superintendent of the state penitentiary, petitioner showed that sentences for burglary on separate indictments and one judgment pronounced in 1934 should have run concurrently and that he had served his total period of confinement and ordinarily should have been entitled to discharge. However, it appeared that petitioner had been convicted in 1921 of two other burglaries and that consecutive sentences in the two cases were for a period of thirty years. In 1933, while six years, five months and nineteen days of this earlier sentence still remained unserved, the petitioner received an executive pardon conditioned that if he were found guilty of a violation of the penal laws of the Commonwealth the pardon should be null and void. The Governor did not expressly reserve the right, in the pardon, to revoke it for cause. Petitioner contended that the unserved part of the original sentence began to run concurrently with the sentence imposed in 1934. The order in the 1934 case clearly showed that it was the intention of the trial court to restrict the time of servitude imposed by that order to the five indictments then pending, and there is no statute in Virginia regulating the proceedings to be instituted to establish the breach of a condition in a pardon granted to a person serving time in the penitentiary. The superintendent of the penitentiary, in his demurrer and answer to the petition, prayed that the petitioner should have a rule issued against him to show cause why he should not be recommitted to respondent's custody to serve the unexpired term for which he was conditionally pardoned.
Held: That the prayer should have been granted and the rule issued under the common law power of the trial court, which may be invoked in the absence of a statute regulating the proceedings to revoke a pardon where the governor has not expressly reserved the right, in the pardon, to revoke it for cause.
Error to a judgment of the Hustings Court of the city of Richmond. Hon. John L. Ingram, judge presiding.
The opinion states the case.
W. A. Hall, Jr., for the plaintiff in error.
Abram P. Staples, Attorney-General, Edwin H. Gibson, Assistant Attorney-General, and Walter E. Rogers, Special Assistant, for the defendant in error.
William P. Hudson, a convict, instituted habeas corpus proceedings in the trial court against Rice M. Youell, superintendent of the State penitentiary. From the judgment dismissing the petition on demurrer, petitioner sought and obtained this writ of error.
On January 2, 1934, the grand jury of the Hustings Court of the city of Richmond returned five indictments against petitioner. One indictment charged that he attempted to murder one R. E. Munn on November 19, 1933. The other four indictments charged that petitioner burglarized the homes of J. E. Haws, F. E. Traylor, D. S. Ashton and Nellie Harris on different dates.
The following is certified to us to be the true record of the judgment pronounced against petitioner:
Petitioner contends that this order is insufficient to hold him in custody for more than five years.
It seems evident that the trial judge contemplated imposing cumulative sentences totaling twenty-one years — one year on the indictment for attempted murder, referred to as the first case and named first in the caption — but there is nothing in the language of the order or the title to indicate the order of sequence of the sentences on the four indictments charging burglary. It may be inferred from the words, "pleaded guilty of attempt murder as charged in the first case * * *, and the court * * * doth ascertain the term of confinement * * * at one year in the first case and at five years in each of the other four cases, * * * said terms to run consecutively," that the trial court intended petitioner to serve the one year sentence for attempted murder first and the sentences for burglary thereafter. But in what order should petitioner begin his term of servitude for the four burglaries? The indictments contain no serial numbers or other identifying marks tending to show the order of presentation or the order of trial....
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