In re Eckart. riginal
| Citation | 166 U.S. 481,17 S.Ct. 638,41 L.Ed. 1085 |
| Decision Date | 19 April 1897 |
| Docket Number | O,No. 14,14 |
| Parties | In re ECKART. riginal |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Rublee A. Cole, for petitioner.
W. H. Mylrea, for espondent.
This is an application for the allowance of a writ of habeas corpus, to obtain the discharge of the petitioner from an alleged unlawful imprisonment in the Wisconsin State Prison.
From the statements in the petition and return, it appears that petitioner has been detained in custody since April 13, 1878, under a judgment of the circuit court of Jefferson county, Wis., entered upon a verdict of a jury finding him 'guilty,' after trial had, upon an information which charged Eckart with having, 'on the 13th day of December in the year 1877, at Jefferson county, state of Wisconsin, unlawfully, feloniously, and of his malice aforethought killed and murdered Charles Paterson, against the peace and dignity of the state of Wisconsin.' The ground relied upon to establish that the imprisonment, under the judgment referred to, was unlawful, is that, under the laws of Wisconsin, murder is divided into three degrees, the punishment varying according to the degree, and that, as the verdict in question failed to specify the degree of murder of which the accused was found guilty, the trial court was without jurisdiction to pass sentence and judgment upon the accused, and the deprivation of liberty under such judgment is without due process of law.
It also appears from the statements in the petition and answer to the rule that in September, 1893, Eckart unsuccessfully applied to the supreme court of Wisconsin for the allowance of a writ of habeas corpus, asserting in his petition the same detention and the same grounds for his right to release as is relied upon in the present application, and that in his petition to the Wisconsin court he specially set up that the was restrained of his liberty 'contrary to the constitution of the United States and laws enacted thereunder, and without the due process of law guarantied by the fourteenth amendment to that instrument.'
It has been held by the supreme court of Wisconsin that, under the statutes of that state, an allegation of the commission of crime in language such as was employed in the information upon which Eckart was tried would justify a conviction of murder in either the first, second, or third degree, and it has also been there held that the jury must find the degree in their verdict, in order that the court may impose the proper punishment. Hogan v. State, 30 Wis. 428, 434; Allen v. State, 85 Wis. 32, 54 N. W. 999; La Tour v. State (Wis.) 67 N. W. 1138.
In its decision refusing the writ applied for by Eckart, the supreme court of Wisconsin held that, while the conviction under the sentence in question was erroneous, the error in passing sentence was not a jurisdictional defect, and the judgment was therefore not void. In this view we concur. The court had jurisdiction of the offense charged, and of the person of the accused. The verdict clearly did not acquit him of the crime with which he was charged, but found that he had committed an offense embraced with in the accusation upon which he was tried. It was within the jurisdiction of the trial judge to pass upon the sufficiency of the verdict, and to construe its legal meaning, and if, in so doing, he erred, and held the verdict to be sufficiently certain to authorize the imposition of punishment for the highest grade of the offense charged, it was an error committed in the exercise of jurisdiction, and one which does not present a jurisdictional defect, remediable by the writ of habeas corpus. The case is analogous in principle to that of a trial and conviction upon an indictment, the facts averred in which are asserted to be insufficient to constitute an offense against the statute claimed to have been violated. In this class of cases it has been held that a trial court possessing general jurisdiction of the class of offenses within which is embraced the crime cought to be set forth in the indictment is possessed of authority to determine the sufficiency of an indictment, and, in adjudging it to be valid and sufficient, acts within its jurisdiction, and a conviction and judgment thereunder cannot be questioned on...
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