People v. Scott (1918) · DecisionDepot

People v. Scott

Name: California Superior Court Tentative Rulings
Creator: DecisionDepot
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

California Court of Appeal Dec 11, 1918 No. Crim. No. 616.Published

Before: Conrey

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Holding. The court held that a defendant is not entitled to a new trial under Penal Code section 1202 when a trial court resentences them after an initial indeterminate sentence is found to be unconstitutional and ex post facto.

Issues

Whether a defendant is entitled to a new trial under Penal Code section 1202 when judgment is pronounced after the statutory time limit following an invalid initial sentence.
Whether the trial court's jurisdiction to pronounce a valid sentence is exhausted once a defendant begins serving an initial sentence later found to be unconstitutional.

Disposition. affirmed

Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion

“Section 1202, Penal Code, providing that a new trial should be granted unless judgment is pronounced within the time limited in section 1191, Penal Code, has no application to a case of this kind in which a sentence has been imposed.”

“In accordance with the law, as declared in that decision, the judgment appealed from in this case is affirmed, and the order denying defendant’s motion for a new trial is affirmed.”

Synopsis

The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.

CONREY, P. J.

The defendant was convicted of the crime of rape, committed on or about the twenty-eighth day of June, 1917, upon a female whose age was more than eighteen years. According to section 264 of the Penal Code, that crime is punishable by imprisonment in the state prison not more than fifty years. According to a statute which became effective on the twenty-seventh day of July, 1917, the Penal Code was amended by adding thereto a new section, numbered 1168, wherein it is provided that “every person convicted of a public offense, for which public offense punishment by imprisonment in any reformatory or the state prison is now prescribed by law, . . . shall be sentenced to be confined in the state prison, but the court in imposing such sentence shall not fix the term or duration of the period of imprisonment.” It was further provided that the period of such confinement shall not exceed the maximum or be less than the minimum term of imprisonment provided by law for the public offense of which such person was convicted. Pursuant to the verdict rendered against the defendant in this case, the superior court, on the eighteenth day of September, 1917, ordered and adjudged that the defendant be punished “by imprisonment in the state prison of the state of California. ’ ’ Thereafter, by order of court made on the tenth day of May, 1918, the defendant was returned to the superior court of San Diego County “to be sentenced upon said conviction according to the law of said state existing at the time of the commission of said offense, to wit, on or about the 28th day of June, 1917, and prior to the taking effect of said indeterminate sentence law.” Defendant having been brought before the court on the thirteenth day of May, 1918, for sentence, the defendant moved for a new trial solely upon the ground that the sentence is not pronounced within the time limited by section 1202 of the Penal Code. The court denied that motion and pronounced judgment upon the defendant that he be punished by imprisonment in the state prison of the state of California at

[130]

San Quentin for the term of ten years. The defendant appeals from the judgment so rendered on the thirteenth day of May, 1918, and from the order denying his said motion for a new trial.

Ex parte Lee,

People v. Scott

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Synopsis

CONREY, P. J.

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