People v. Superior Court

SPENCE, J.

Petitioner seeks a peremptory writ of mandate to compel the respondent court- “to make, enter, give and file an order and judgment dismissing and denying” a certain appeal from an order of the police court of the city of Burlingame.

A complaint was originally filed in said police court charging Paul P. Bid with the commission of a misdemeanor. He entered a plea of guilty and was thereafter sentenced to be imprisoned in the county jail for a term of ninety days and to pay a fine of $100. While so imprisoned, said Paul P. Bid filed a document in said police court entitled “Petition for Writ of Error Coram Nobis”. He sought thereby to have the judgment set aside and to obtain leave to change his plea from guilty to not guilty for the purpose of having

[444]

a trial upon the merits. His petition was denied and he appealed from the order of denial. The appeal was heard by the respondent court and the order was reversed. Petitioner then filed this proceeding seeking a writ of mandate as above indicated.

We are of the opinion that the writ should be denied. As we understand the main contention of petitioner, it is that the police court had no jurisdiction to entertain said petition of the defendant in the criminal action and that the respondent court therefore “was without jurisdiction to do other than enter an order dismissing the appeal” from the order denying the petition. In our opinion, this contention cannot be sustained.

The place of the so-called writ of error

coram nobis

in the jurisprudence of this state has been clarified by several recent decisions. Said writ was originally a common law remedy which was used under certain exceptional circumstances. The nature of the writ and its survival in modified form in this state is exhaustively discussed in

People

v.

Reid,

195 Cal. 249 [232 Pac. 457, 36 A. L. R 1435], The court there quoted from 5 Encyclopedia of Pleading and Practice, page 27, at page 255 of the opinion, where it is said, “The office of the writ of