In re Wallace
| Decision Date | 09 March 1907 |
| Docket Number | 15,318 |
| Parties | In re WALLACE, Petitioner |
| Court | Kansas Supreme Court |
Decided January, 1907.
Original proceeding in habeas corpus.
Writ denied and prisoner remanded.
SYLLABUS bye THE COURT.
1. JURISDICTION--Question of Fact--Judgment Conclusive Evidence. Where the jurisdiction of the court depends upon a fact which the court is required to ascertain and decide its judgment determining that the fact does exist is conclusive evidence of jurisdiction until set aside or reversed by a direct proceeding.
2. HABEAS CORPUS--Erroneous Judgment. No offender under sixteen years of age may be imprisoned in the state industrial reformatory, but where a judgment in the district court recites that the age of the defendant sentenced to that institution was found and decided to be more than sixteen years the adjudication of that fact, although erroneous, is not open to attack in a habeas corpus proceeding.
Biddle & Lardner, for petitioner.
Fred S Jackson, attorney-general, and John S. Dawson, assistant attorney-general, for respondent.
Henry S. Wallace petitions the court for the release of his son from imprisonment in the state industrial reformatory. He alleges that on August 9, 1906, Russell Arthur Wallace was adjudged by the district court of Miami county to be confined in the reformatory when he was in fact less than fifteen years of age; that the judgment was given upon a plea of guilty, without inquiry as to his son's age; and that his son was carried to the reformatory without the knowledge of the petitioner. It is contended that the court had no jurisdiction to sentence any person under sixteen years of age to the reformatory, and that, the sentence being void, E. E. Marshall, superintendent of the reformatory, has no authority to restrain the young man. In his return to the writ the superintendent sets up the judgment and commitment under which Wallace is held, which, after setting forth that Wallace and another entered a plea of guilty upon a charge of burglary and larceny, recites that "whereupon it is made to appear to the court that said defendants are between the ages of sixteen (16) and twenty-five (25) years, and have never heretofore been convicted of any offense punishable by confinement in the state penitentiary, etc." There was a further recital that the court then proceeded to sentence them to the reformatory until discharged by the board of managers, but not to exceed the term of five years, the maximum punishment provided by statute for the crime of which they had been convicted.
Upon the hearing the petitioner offered to prove that the young man was under sixteen years of age when the sentence was pronounced, but the state objected, and contended that in habeas corpus the judgment of the district court was conclusive; that the matter of age had been the subject of inquiry in the district court, where it was determined that the defendants were over sixteen years of age; and that the decision, even if it was erroneous, cannot be reviewed or made the subject of inquiry in this collateral proceeding.
This proceeding is no more than a collateral challenge of a record of the district court. That record discloses that the question of the age of the prisoner was heard and decided by the court. The record imports absolute verity, and cannot be overthrown by parol testimony or impeached from without. If a mistake was made in deciding the question of fact it can only be corrected upon an appeal. The jurisdiction of the court and the legality of the sentence are open to inquiry in habeas corpus, and if it appeared from the face of the record that Wallace was less than sixteen years of age the sentence would be illegal and he would be entitled to a discharge in this proceeding. On the face of the record the judgment appears to be valid. It has been held that "where a party is held under process issued on any final judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction the inquiry in habeas corpus is limited to the question, Was the judgment void, or has it been stayed, superseded, or otherwise spent its force?"
It is urged that no offender under sixteen years of age can be imprisoned in the state industrial reformatory, and therefore that no court had power to sentence Wallace to this institution. It is true, as counsel contend, that under the act establishing juvenile courts delinquent children under sixteen years of age may never be committed to the state industrial reformatory. (Laws 1905, ch. 190.) This beneficent act is an exercise of the parental power of the state, the purpose being the care, custody and discipline of
delinquent children in a manner approximating as nearly as may be proper parental care and control, and it was not intended that they should be treated or punished as criminals. The court is disposed to give the act a liberal construction, with a view of carrying out its salutary...
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...jurisdiction would not attach, because there would be nothing for the court to act upon." (P. 709, 121 P. p. 1097.) In In re Wallace, 75 Kan. 432, 89 P. 687, it was 'Where the jurisdiction of the court depends upon a fact which the court is required to ascertain and decide, its judgment det......
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Johnson's Estate, In re
...76, 225 P. 1054. Whether the court's determination of that question was correct or erroneous may not now be inquired into. In In re Wallace, 75 Kan. 432, 89 P. 687, it was 'The general rule is that, when a court passes upon a question of fact which it has a right to determine, its erroneous......
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Steinkirchner v. Linscheid
...comes within such an exception to the general rule. The present case comes clearly within the rule set forth in the case of In re Wallace, 75 Kan. 432, 89 P. 687, the syllabus of which reads: 'Where the jurisdiction of the court depends upon a fact which the court is required to ascertain a......
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