People v. Booth

HART, J.

On the twentieth day of September, 1917, the defendant was charged by information filed by the district attorney of Butte bounty in the superior court of said county with the crime of forgery, alleged to have been committed on or about the eighth day of the preceding month of June. On the said twentieth day of September, upon being duly arraigned upon said information, the defendant entered a plea of guilty to the crime therein charged, and the court thereupon fixed Monday, September 24, 1917, at 10 o’clock A. M., as the time for the pronouncement of judgment of sentence, and on the day last mentioned the court, after due proceedings, sentenced the accused to be punished by imprisonment in the state prison at San Quentin “for the indeterminate term of one to fourteen years.” The defendant was thereafter and' in due time delivered by the sheriff to the custody of the warden of the state prison at San Quentin.

On the eighteenth day of March, 1918, and after serving six months in the state prison, the defendant addressed to the judge of the superior court of Butte County a letter in which he called the attention of the judge to the case of

Ex parte Lee,

177 Cal. 690, [171 Pac. 958], on

habeas corpus,

and declared that, under the ruling in that case, the judgment sentencing him (defendant) to an indeterminate term was voidable, inasmuch as the crime for which he had been sentenced was committed before section 1168 of the Penal Code, authorizing indeterminate sentences, went into effect, the supreme court holding in the, Lee case that the said section, as to defendants whose offenses had been committed prior to its enactment, was

ex post facto,

and, therefore, unconstitutional and void. Upon receiving and reading the said letter, the court, recognizing that error had been committed in the matter of pronouncing judgment of sentence against the defendant, made an order for the return of the prisoner into court to the end that a legal judgment might be pronounced and entered in the case. In pursuance of said order, the defendant was, on the twenty-second day of March, 1918, brought into court by the sheriff, and, after due proceedings,

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