State v. Stodulski, 45341

• Decision Date: 11 February 1957
• Docket Number: No. 1,No. 45341,45341,1
• Citation: 298 S.W.2d 420
• Parties: STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. Stanley J. STODULSKI, Appellant
• Court: Missouri Supreme Court

Page 420

298 S.W.2d 420

STATE of Missouri, Respondent, v. Stanley J. STODULSKI, Appellant.

No. 45341.

Supreme Court of Missouri, Division No. 1.

Feb. 11, 1957.

Cecil Block, St. Louis, for appellant.

John M. Dalton, Atty. Gen., W. Don Kennedy, Asst. Atty. Gen., for respondent.

COIL, Commissioner.

This is an appeal from an order denying petitioner-defendant relief after a hearing on an application for a writ of error coram nobis.

Appellant (applicant-defendant below) filed in Division 10 of the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis, an 'Application for Writ of Error Coram Nobis.' He averred therein: that on October 5, 1942, he, then 17 years old, in custody and without counsel, without being advised of his right to counsel, without means to engage counsel, and without understanding that he was charged with a felony, pled guilty to larceny of a motor vehicle as charged in an information therefore filed and was sentenced to three months in the city workhouse; that the court records do not disclose that he was advised of his right to counsel or that he had counsel, or that he was aware of the seriousness of the charge; that he would have accepted the assistance of counsel; that he was a first offender and had little education; that if he had had counsel he in 'all probability' would not have pled guilty; that the facts alleged disclose that he was denied due process of law in violation of the constitutions of Missouri and the United States, and therefore the judgment of conviction and the pursuant sentence were void and should be set aside. Defendant prayed for a hearing and that an order issue to the warden of the Missouri penitentiary to produce him for such hearing.

Apparently such an order was issued or at least petitioner was present at the hearing on his application and testified that he was then confined in the penitentiary by reason of a conviction on another charge and had been sentenced under the Habitual Criminal Act, Section 556.280 RSMo 1949, V.A.M.S. by reason of a jury having found that he had priorly been convicted of the felony to which he had pled guilty on October 5, 1942. He also testified that he had fully served the three-months' workhouse sentence imposed as a result of his guilty plea.

As noted, the application in the instant case was denominated an application for writ of error coram nobis. If the application were one which is contemplated by the terms of Supreme Court Rule 27.26, 42 V.A.M.S. or were one which we could consider as an application for a writ of habeas corpus, we should so do without further discussion. That is because 'The motion filed by defendant is not to be determined by the name given it, but rather upon the facts alleged and the relief sought. If the facts alleged and the relief sought entitle him to consideration of his motion on its merits, then it is reasonable and just that it be so considered, despite nomenclature.' State v. Eaton, Mo.Sup., 280 S.W.2d 63, 65. It is clear, however, that the instant application is not within the provisions of S.C. Rule 27.26 because that rule by its specific language provides that a motion thereunder attacks the sentence under which petitioner is then in custody. Instant petitioner attacks a sentence which he had long since served in full; he is in custody under a sentence pronounced in an independent and long subsequent proceeding. For like reasons, and probably others, we may not treat the application, as it stands, i. e., where it attacks only the prior judgment, as one for a writ of habeas corpus.

It would appear, therefore, that if petitioner may be heard at all to attack a judgment, the sentence under which has been completed, his remedy must be by motion in the nature of a writ of coram nobis. It therefore should be first determined whether there is any available remedy to attack the judgment under the noted circumstances, or, stated differently, whether the trial court had the power to entertain petitioner's application.

United States v. Morgan, 346 U.S. 502, 74 S.Ct. 247, 98 L.Ed. 248, was a case in which a defendant attacked a federal conviction as invalid even though his sentence thereunder had been completed and, at the time of the application for relief, was incarcerated in a state prison to which he had been sentenced for a longer term by reason of the prior federal conviction. The opinion and the dissenting opinion express opposing views on the question we are now considering. The court said, 346 U.S. 512, 74 S.Ct. 253, 98 L.Ed. 257: 'Although the term has been served, the results of the conviction may persist. Subsequent convictions may carry heavier penalties, civil rights may be affected.' The writer of the dissenting opinion said, 346 U.S. 519, 74 S.Ct. 256, 98 L.Ed. 260, 261: 'It may be said that the federal conviction is still being used against respondent and, therefore, some relief ought to be available. Of course the record of a conviction for a serious crime is often a lifelong handicap. There are a dozen ways in which even a person who has reformed, never offended again, and constantly endeavored to lead an upright life may be prejudiced thereby. The stain on his reputation may at any time thereaten his social standing or affect his job opportunities, for example. Is coram nobis also to be available in such cases? The relief being devised here is either wide open to every ex-convict as long as he lives or else it is limited to those who have returned to crime and want the record expunged to lessen a subsequent sentence. Either alternative seems unwarranted to me.

'The important principle that means for redressing deprivations of constitutional rights should be available often clashes with the also important principle that at some point a judgment should become final--that litigation must enentually come to an end. These conflicting principles have traditionally been accommodated in federal criminal cases by permitting collateral attack on a judgment only during the time that punishment under the judgment is being imposed, and Congress has so limited the use of proceedings by motion under 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2255, 28 U.S.C.A. Sec. 2255. If that is to be changed, Congress should do it.'

As noted, the dissent in Morgan pointed out that 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2255 had provided for a collateral attack on a judgment only during the time that the punishment under that judgment was being served and, as we understand, took the view that congressional enactment of that section indicated that the remedy there provided was exclusive. Of course, the premise for that view was the further opinion that there was no authority for a writ of error coram nobis under the all-writs section of the federal code and that, even if there was, the writ of error coram nobis would not lie because the errors of fact alleged in the application were errors, if any, which must have been known to the trial court at the time of disposition of the case.

The decisive opinion in Morgan, however, took the view that the writ of error coram nobis had not been abolished in federal criminal cases, that the power to issue the writ stemmed from the all-writs section, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 1651(a), and that it could not be determined from the allegations in the application whether the alleged errors were ones which could or could not be corrected by relief in the nature of coram nobis.

The state, in the instant, case, takes the position that coram nobis will not issue here because the errors alleged as destroying the validity of the judgment were all matters which must have been known to the trial judge on October 5, 1942, i. e., that the trial judge must have known of the youthfulness of defendant, whether he had counsel, whether he had intelligently waived counsel, and whether he understood the charge to which he pled guilty.

In State v. Harrison, Mo.Sup., 276 S.W.2d 222, 223[1-3], we said: 'The writ of error coram nobis is a common-law remedy. The writ, or a motion or application for relief of that nature, is recognized in Missouri. The application is made to the trial court to correct errors of fact, not appearing on the face of the record, affecting the validity of proceedings which errors of fact were unknown to the party now seeking relief and to the court at the time of the disposition of the particular case, and which errors of fact, had they been known, would have prevented the rendition of the judgment.'

We are not persuaded that it necessarily follows that the trial court in which defendant entered the plea of guilty in 1942 knew or must have known the facts alleged in the instant motion. True, a trial judge would know whether at the time he sentenced a defendant there was then present no counsel representing that defendant, but it does not inevitably follow what facts the trial judge knew of did not know relating to the circumstances which caused the defendant to appear without counsel at the particular time in question. Nor are we persuaded that the enactment of S.C. Rule 27.26, providing a procedure for attack upon judgment under which defendant is in custody, means that it was thereby intended to exclude any remedy to attack a judgment, the sentence under which has been served prior to the time of the filing of the motion of attack.

In State v. Terrell, Mo.Sup., 276 S.W.2d 219, decided at the same time as State v. Harrison, supra, petitioner there, in the same position as instant petitioner, had been sentenced on pleas of guilty in three cases, had complied with those sentences, and subsequently was convicted of another crime for which he had been sentenced to longer punishment by reason of those prior convictions. Terrell, also like instant petitioner, sought to attack...