People v. Coker

GRIFFIN, J.

On August 6, 1948, defendant entered a plea of guilty to a charge of murder of his wife on July 3, 1948, and to three charges of pimping contained in counts

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2, 3, and 4, which involved defendant’s wife and two other female persons. Two of these offenses are alleged to have been committed on June 12, and the other on June 26. Defendant was committed to state’s prison for life on the first-degree murder charge and for the term prescribed by law on the other charges. Sentences were ordered to run consecutively with that of the first count.

More than two years later, on October 18, 1950, defendant, in propria persona, filed in the Superior Court of Imperial County a purported motion and affidavit reciting that defendant would move the court “for the records . . . that he may again bring his, cause, before this court, with and for the purpose of exomeration and vindication,” and cited such cases as

People

v.

Slobodion,

30 Cal.2d 362 [181 P.2d 868]; and

People

v.

Perez,

9 Cal.App. 265 [98 P. 870].

The trial court treated the proceeding as an application for a writ of error

coram nobis,

set it down for hearing, and notified defendant of the necessity of further affidavits in support of the motion. On November 18, 1950, defendant filed an affidavit reciting that since his incarceration he had the opportunity to study the laws of the State of California in the prison library and that he found out that his conviction was a “mistake of facts and violation of the equal protection of the State of California’s Constitution,” and in violation of “the great act of the common-law act Judi-cata of the State and the United States.”

The force of defendant’s argument, from the briefs apparently prepared by defendant himself on appeal, is that he was (1) denied the aid of counsel at the coroner’s inquest; (2) denied counsel at the preliminary hearing; (3) not informed by the magistrate of his rights; (4) that he was arraigned in the superior court without the advice of counsel; and (5) that defendant’s attorney, who was appointed by the court and appeared for him in the superior court, failed to call as a witness a person who defendant claims heard the deceased remark in a dying statement that the “episode was an accident. ’ ’