Ward v. United States, 9378.
| Decision Date | 22 August 1967 |
| Docket Number | No. 9378.,9378. |
| Citation | 381 F.2d 14 |
| Parties | Arley WARD, Appellant, v. UNITED STATES of America, Appellee. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit |
Louis Parkinson, Englewood, Colo., for appellant.
Newell A. George, U. S. Atty., for appellee.
Before BREITENSTEIN, HILL and SETH, Circuit Judges.
The appeal is from an order entered, after an evidentiary hearing, denying a petition for a writ of error coram nobis.
The facts, as disclosed by the evidence and found by the trial court, may be summarized as follows: Appellant-petitioner, in 1931, was charged by indictment in the District of Kansas with violation of the Motor Vehicle Theft Act. He was thereafter arraigned upon the indictment and entered a plea of not guilty. Subsequently, by agreement with the government prosecutor, he appeared before the trial court, pleaded guilty to the charge and the imposition of sentence was suspended and probation granted for a period of five years. In 1935, a bench warrant was issued by the trial judge for the apprehension of Ward as a probation violator but apparently the warrant was never executed and the period of probation expired without the imposition of a sentence of confinement.
It is undisputed that Ward did not have an attorney, retained or appointed, during any of the proceedings recited above and did not effectively waive his right to counsel. The trial judge expressly found that "Because of petitioner's poverty, youth, illiteracy and his personal inability to evaluate the legal intricacies involved in the determination of whether to plead guilty or to plead not guilty and go to trial, the petitioner had no other reasonable alternative to gain his freedom but to accept the proposal * * * to plead guilty and to be placed on probation."
In addition to the judgment of conviction under attack, the record shows in 1929, Ward was convicted of the crime of burglary, in 1934, of receiving money under false pretenses, in 1933, of the crime of robbery, in 1952, for a violation af the Dyer Act, and in 1965, he was convicted in the Oklahoma State Court for murder and is now serving a life term pursuant thereto.
Since the decision in United States v. Morgan, 346 U.S. 502, 74 S.Ct. 247, 98 L.Ed. 248, there has been no question about the availability of the ancient writ of error coram nobis to a person convicted of a crime in a United States District Court. Such remedy remains available even after the judgment of conviction and sentence...
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...in the nature of coram nobis may be given. E. g., United States v. Morgan, 346 U.S. 502, 74 S.Ct. 247, 98 L.Ed. 248; Ward v. United States, 381 F.2d 14 (10th Cir.); see also Casias v. United States, 421 F. 2d 1233 (10th Cir.). However, such relief must be sought in the court which imposed t......
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