In Re Baldwin

CONREY, P. J.

Mamie Baldwin, in whose behalf the petition was filed, is held in custody under two judgments of the municipal court of the city of Los Angeles, in causes numbered 07879 and 08870, which by stipulation were tried jointly before a jury. Each complaint charged the commission of a misdemeanor by having in possession alcoholic intoxicating liquors, etc. Each complaint alleged that the defendant, before the commission of the stated offense, had been convicted in the same court of another offense of like character to the one for which defendant was now being prosecuted. In the original petition on which the writ was issued herein, petitioner alleged that there was no finding by court or jury in said causes of any previous conviction. For this reason petitioner claimed that the judgments were in excess of the jurisdiction of the court in this, that in cause No. 07879 the court imposed a sentence of thirty days’ imprisonment, whereas the maximum penalty that could have

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been imposed would have been a fine of $500; and also in this, that in cause No. 08870 the court imposed a sentence of $750 or that in lieu thereof the defendant suffer imprisonment for a term of seventy-five days, whereas the maximum penalty that could have been imposed would have been $500 fine.

In the return to the writ it was stated that in each of said actions the defendant, at the time of entering her plea of not guilty to the pending charge, admitted the prior conviction as alleged in the complaint.

Thereafter by permission of this court petitioner filed an amended petition in which she alleged:

“Each of the complaints in said causes bears a memorandum notation ‘Admits prior,’ which is undated, unsigned, with no indication by whom it was placed there or at what time, such notation not appearing in the memorandum of proceedings on the back of the complaint, but appearing upon the face thereof, and there is no record in the proceedings of the court to show that the defendant made any admission of prior conviction of the offense alleged in the complaint in either case in open court during any of the proceedings therein in either case, the said anonymous notations on the said complaints being the only notations or memoranda regarding such alleged prior convictions, which appeared either in the files or records of either cause at the time of the sentence of the defendant in each of said causes; and said files and records do not now show any finding either by the court or the jury that the defendant, in either of said causes, had been previously convicted of the offense alleged in the complaint as a previous conviction.”