Wallace v. State
| Decision Date | 11 January 1952 |
| Citation | 193 Tenn. 182,245 S.W.2d 192,29 Beeler 182,29 A.L.R.2d 941 |
| Parties | WALLACE v. STATE. 29 Beeler 182, 193 Tenn. 182, 245 S.W.2d 192, 29 A.L.R.2d 941 |
| Court | Tennessee Supreme Court |
Homer B. Weimar, Walker & Hooker, al of Nashville, for plaintiff in error.
Andrew D. Tanner, Nashville, for defendant in error.
This is an application by Wallace to me, as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, to be admitted to bail pending his trial in the Criminal Court of Davidson County on indictments charging him with a felony, which is a grade less than a capital offense. The application is made because the trial judge refused to admit the petitioner to a second bail pending his trial, he having defaulted on his first bail bond. Associate Justices Prewitt and Tomlinson were directed to be present and participate in the hearing.
The record made in the lower court and upon which this application is based is very meager. It consists only of the arguments of counsel wherein certain statements of fact are made to the court, and of the reply made from time to time by the court to the arguments and assertions of fact made by various counsel. That which can be gathered from the record in support of the application will now be stated. It appears from the petition that Wallace was arrested and bound to the grand jury upon the felony charges mentioned above and pending the action of the grand jury the trial judge fixed his bond at $35,000.00. This was later reduced to $15,000.00 by consent of the District Attorney General. He was in due course indicted on September 28, 1951, and the cases set for trial on October 4, 1951. The petitioner was not present on that date and a conditional forfeiture was taken on his bond. A show cause order as to why the judgment should not be made final was issued and that phase of the matter is now pending in the trial court.
Following Wallace's release on the above mentioned bond, and while sojourning in the State of Indiana, he was arrested and committed to jail for a felony alleged to have been committed in that State prior to the date of the offenses for which he had been indicted by the grand jury of Davidson County. It was for this reason he was not present in the Davidson County Criminal Court on October 4, 1951, in compliance with his appearance bond. The State of Indiana surrendered the petitioner to Tennessee authorities and he was accordingly released and returned to this State, he having waived extradition, and placed in jail.
When Wallace was next brought into the Criminal Court of Davidson County he made application for a continuance of his case in order presumably to have time within which to prepare his defenses. That application was granted. He then made application for bail which was refused. As we understand it this refusal was based on two grounds, to-wit, (1) that he had lost his right to bail by his failure to appear when his case was called for trial on October 4, 1951, in accordance with the obligations of his bond; and (2) because the contempt of which he was prima facie guilty by his failure to appear had not been purged.
It is assumed that what is meant by purging the contempt is to comply with whatever order the court should make on the principal and sureties on his previous bail bond consistent with the obligations thereto.
Before such an order can be made the sureties, as well as the principal, are entitled to be heard. An opportunity to hear them in the manner and time provided by law had not been afforded when this application was made. It would seem therefore that the application for bail should not have been denied on that ground. Otherwise, the sureties by procuring continuances on a proper showing could keep the applicant in jail an indefinite time notwithstanding his right, if subject to be released again on bail.
This reduces the problem here to a question as to whether or not Wallace lost his right to bail by his failure to appear at the time and in the manner called for by his previous bail bond upon which a forfeiture was taken.
The insistence made in behalf of the petitioner is that under our Constitution, Article 1, Section 15, the trial judge has no discretion in the matter but must admit the applicant to bail except in capital cases. That Section of the Constitution provides that 'All prisoners shall be bailable by sufficient sureties, unless for capital offences, when the proof is evident or the presumption great.'
Under the foregoing constitutional provision the petitioner is entitled to bail as a matter of right, unless he forfeited it by reason of his failure to comply with the conditions of a prior bail bond upon which a forfeiture had been taken. In State ex rel. Lea v. Brown, 166 Tenn. 669, 693, 64 S.W.2d 841, 848, 91 A.L.R. 1246, the Court quotes with approval from a leading New York case, In re Cooper, 93 N.Y. 507, 512,...
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Mello v. Superior Court
...one state has said that where the defendant breached bail by a failure to appear at court, bail must be given again. Wallace v. State, 193 Tenn. 182, 245 S.W.2d 192 (1952). However, for the reasons that follow we find the rationable of those authorities supporting revocation of bail more It......
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Fields v. Henry Cnty., Tenn.
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