State v. Hart

• Decision Date: 20 October 1885
• Parties: STATE v. HART.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

67 Iowa 142

25 N.W. 99

STATE

v.HART.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Filed October 20, 1885.

Appeal from Cass district court.

Defendant was indicted and convicted of the crime of forgery. He now appeals to this court.E. Willard and L. L. De Lano, for appellant, M. D. Hart.

A. J. Baker, Atty. Gen., for the State.

BECK, C. J.

1. The defendant moved to set aside the indictment for the reason that the grand jury finding it had not been drawn in the manner prescribed by law. The facts upon which the motion was based are these: A defendant held to answer to a criminal charge had challenged the grand jury on the ground that it was illegally drawn, in that the lists of grand jurors had been compared with a transcript of the poll-books and not with the poll-books themselves. See Code, § 240. Upon the consideration of the challenge the district court sustained it, deciding that the jury had not been lawfully drawn, and discharged the grand jury, and another was summoned as prescribed by Code, § 244. Defendant was indicted by the grand jury summoned in the place of the one discharged. He now insists that the first grand jury was illegally discharged, and that the second was therefore unlawfully impaneled.

2. The question of the illegal impaneling of the second jury depends upon the correctness of the decision of the court in discharging the first. If that decision was correct, then the second was lawfully impaneled. It will be held by the law as correct until it is lawfully set aside or reversed. But that cannot be done in a collateral proceeding, and the motion of defendant to quash the indictment is of such a proceeding. We must keep in view the exact facts. Defendant by his motion does not directly assail the decision under which the first jury was discharged; he attacks the order of the court impaneling the second, which he claims was irregular because there was another lawful jury, the first one, or because the decision under which it was discharged was erroneous. He thus, in fact, assails the first order in a collatteral proceeding. We need not inquire whether defendant could, under the provisions of the law, assail in any manner the order for the discharge of the first jury. If the statute makes no provision for such a proceeding we cannot supply the omission. The impediment in the way of the administration of the criminal law, which would arise in case defendant's position is sound, would obviously result, in many cases, in the defeat of justice. The order of the court discharging the grand jury would come up for review in all cases wherein indictments should be found by the second grand jury, thus making the administration of justice uncertain. The objection urged by defendant is not commended to us by any showing, or even allegations, of prejudice or possible injustice resulting to defendant by reason of the fact that the indictment was found by the second grand jury. And we cannot imagine any special prejudice that would result to him therefrom, or that the fact in any manner would work injustice. The courts, we think, are beginning to turn their faces from all technical objections made in criminal cases, and from all complaints of irregularities and non-compliance with forms from which no prejudice or injustice could result to the accused. It is well that this disposition now exists, and it is to the discredit of the administration of the law that it has not been...