Parenti v. District Court of Adams County
| Decision Date | 24 June 1924 |
| Docket Number | 35779 |
| Citation | 199 N.W. 259,198 Iowa 560 |
| Parties | WILLIAM PARENTI, Plaintiff, v. DISTRICT COURT OF ADAMS COUNTY et al., Defendants |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
REHEARING DENIED SEPTEMBER 26, 1924.
Certiorari to Adams District Court.--HOMER A. FULLER, Judge.
PROCEEDING in certiorari, to review the action of the district court of Iowa (Homer A. Fuller, judge), in and for Adams County, in which the plaintiff claims that the defendant acted illegally in connection with the trial of a criminal cause entitled State of Iowa v. Parenti, the defendant being the petitioner herein. The opinion sufficiently states the facts.--Writ discharged and the petition dismissed.
Writ discharged and petition dismissed.
Wisdom & Wisdom, for plaintiff.
Ben J Gibson, Attorney-general, D. H. Meyerhoff, and John W. Bixby County Attorney, for defendants.
DE GRAFF, J.
This is a proceeding in certiorari against the district court of Adams County, Iowa, Homer A. Fuller, judge, and R. E Phillip, clerk. The petitioner contends that the defendants acted illegally in connection with the trial of a criminal cause entitled State v. Parenti (plaintiff herein), and seeks in this proceeding to annul the action of the district court in the latter case. For a proper understanding of this contention it is necessary to outline briefly the chronology of the criminal case.
Parenti, defendant in the criminal cause and petitioner in this action, was indicted March 14, 1922, by the grand jury of Adams County, for the crime of liquor nuisance. On October 3, 1922, a motion was filed to quash said indictment, based on the ground that the evidence as contained in the minutes attached was illegally obtained. This motion was overruled, and an exception noted. Defendant entered a plea of not guilty, and the cause proceeded to trial. Upon the conclusion of the testimony for the State, defendant filed his motion for a directed verdict, based upon the insufficiency of the evidence to sustain a conviction. This motion was overruled, but was renewed at the close of all the evidence, and again overruled and exceptions noted. On October 4, 1922, the jury returned a verdict of guilty as charged. On October 4, 1922, there was filed a motion in arrest of judgment, which alleged that the court erred in rulings on the admission and exclusion of evidence, in the giving of certain instructions, and the insufficiency of the evidence to sustain the verdict. The trial court overruled this motion, and on October 5, 1922, pronounced sentence and judgment. On October 12, 1922, notice of appeal to this court was duly and legally served. Thereafter, and on June 11, 1923, there was filed in the district court a motion "to set aside ruling on motion for new trial; amendment to motion for new trial; supplemental motion for new trial, and motion in arrest of judgment." It is therein alleged that the defendant has not received a fair and impartial trial, in that no lawful indictment was presented by the grand jury of Adams County, predicated on the claim that the grand jury which returned the indictment was illegally drawn. This motion was overruled, and the ruling constitutes the proximate cause for the filing in this court of a petition for writ of certiorari.
The record discloses that, during the pendency of the instant indictment, there was another indictment pending against the defendant, returned by the same grand jury, charging him with the crime of compounding a felony. Before plea in the felony case, but subsequently to the trial and judgment in the liquor nuisance case, the defendant filed a challenge to the grand jury and a motion to quash the felony indictment. The specific grounds which were embodied in the challenge were the absence of certification of certain of the grand jury lists by the judges of the election; that the auditor certified to several of the townships in the county an excess number of names to be returned by the election boards in said townships; that the board of supervisors did not supply the lists of grand jurors with names from townships in precincts which had not returned them; and that the county auditor did not make and file in his office, after the election in 1920 the entire list of names returned for service as grand jurors for the years 1921 and 1922. On the showing made, defendant's motion was sustained, and the...
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