Snyder v. State

• Decision Date: 14 June 1921
• Docket Number: 7 Div. 717
• Citation: 90 So. 40,18 Ala.App. 188
• Parties: SNYDER v. STATE.
• Court: Alabama Court of Appeals

90 So. 40

18 Ala.App. 188

SNYDER v. STATE.

7 Div. 717

Court of Appeals of Alabama

June 14, 1921

Appeal from Circuit Court, Etowah County; O.A. Steele, Judge.

Habeas Corpus proceedings by Arthur Snyder, to procure his discharge from custody on sentence for a violation of the prohibition laws. From a judgment denying the discharge, petitioner appeals. Affirmed.

P.E Culli and W.J. Boykin, both of Gadsden, for appellant.

Harwell G. Davis, Atty. Gen., for the State.

MERRITT J.

The appellant appeals from a judgment rendered by Hon. O.A Steele, judge of the circuit court of Etowah county, denying his discharge on a writ of habeas corpus heard by said judge.

So far as may be necessary to a consideration of the questions involved in this appeal, the following facts appear to be without dispute. The petitioner was tried and convicted in the circuit court of Etowah county November 8, 1917, Judge J.E. Blackwood, judge presiding in said trial, on a charge of violating the prohibition laws. The jury assessed a fine of $400, and the trial judge added 12 months as an additional punishment for the offense. An appeal was taken to this court; the judgment of conviction was affirmed, but the sentence, being improper, was set aside, and the cause was remanded, that a proper sentence might be pronounced in accordance with the law. Snyder v. State, 16 Ala.App. 535, 79 So. 316. This was on June 29, 1918.

The case remained on the criminal docket of the circuit court from day to day and from term to term, there being two terms of the criminal court each year. The minutes of the court show that at the end of each term of the court there was a general order continuing all cases on the docket not disposed of. Other than this there was no reference to the case in hand until July 21, 1920, when the docket entry in this case shows that Hon. O.A. Steele, judge of said court, ordered the sheriff to bring petitioner into court, at which time the petitioner appeared, paid the fine and cost which had been imposed upon him, and at which time the court added 6 months as additional punishment, which was suspended as shown by the following order entered at the time:

"Sentence suspended for six months pending good behavior. Defendant to appear January 21, 1921."

Acting under an order from Hon. O.A. Steele, the sheriff, on January 11, 1921, brought petitioner before said judge, and after hearing the testimony the order suspending the hard labor sentence was revoked, and the petitioner was put to hard labor for the county, the sentence to expire 6 months from such date.

The insistence of the appellant that the court was without power to add additional punishment on July 21, 1920, is not tenable. The judgment of conviction was affirmed by the Court of Appeals, and the cause remanded for sentence according to law. That it was not done at the first term of the circuit court thereafter did not cause the circuit court to lose its control over or authority to carry out the mandate of this court. In Charles v. State, 4 Port. 107, it is distinctly held:

"That the court had the power at a succeeding term to render a judgment in a case in which a verdict had been given, but not acted upon by the court at the preceding term."

And this doctrine is reaffirmed in the case of Clanton v State, 96 Ala. 111, 11 So. 299. The case of Ex parte Newton, 94 Ala. 431, 10 So. 549, cited and relied upon by appellant, does not sustain the proposition that the court in the instant case had no right to enter the judgment of July 21, 1920. The court held in that case that, when final judgment was rendered at one term of the trial court, complete in itself, from which an appeal was prosecuted to the Supreme Court, upon affirmance the trial court had no authority to add to or modify its first judgment. It is not questioned here but that the trial court had the...