In Re Dal Porte

California Supreme Court Feb 24, 1926 No. Docket No. Crim. 2833.Published

Before: Curtis

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Holding. A judgment of conviction rendered on a Saturday afternoon is void because Saturday afternoon is a nonjudicial day, but the defendant is not entitled to absolute discharge and must be remanded to custody for further proceedings on the original complaint.

Issues

Whether a police court has jurisdiction to conduct a trial and pronounce judgment on a Saturday afternoon.
Whether a void judgment resulting from a trial on a holiday entitles a petitioner to absolute discharge from custody.
Whether a judgment is void if it includes a count over which the court lacked jurisdiction alongside a count over which it had jurisdiction.

Disposition. remanded to custody

Quotations verified verbatim against the opinion

“Saturday afternoon is a nonjudicial day and that the courts, except the supreme court, are prohibited from transacting during said period any judicial business”

“the judgment under which petitioner is now being held is void and his imprisonment thereunder is illegal.”

CURTIS, J.

Petition for writ of

habeas corpus.

Petitioner was tried, convicted, and sentence pronounced upon him on Saturday afternoon in the police court of the city of Santa Cruz, and was sentenced to pay a fine of $500 and in default thereof to be imprisoned not exceeding 250 days. The fine was not paid, and at the date of the filing of the petition the petitioner was imprisoned under said judgment in the county jail in the county of Santa Cruz.

Petitioner claims that his imprisonment was illegal for the reason that the court had no jurisdiction to try and pronounce judgment against him on Saturday afternoon, a legal holiday.

Section 134 of the Code of Civil Procedure provides: “No court, other than the supreme court, must be open for the transaction of judicial business on any of the holidays mentioned in section ten, except for the following purposes.” (Then follows an enumeration of certain acts which may be legally performed on a holiday, but the trial of an action and the pronouncement of judgment against a defendant convicted of a crime are not included among them.) Section 10, mentioned in said section 134 of the Code of Civil Procedure, obviously refers to section 10 of the Code of Civil Procedure, which was amended in 1925 to read as

[218]

follows: “Holidays within the meaning of this Code are every Sunday and such other days as are specified or provided for as holidays in the Political Code of the State of California.” (Stats. 1925, p. 225, sec. 1.) Prior to this last amendment to the section, section 10' of the Code of Civil Procedure was substantially the same as section 10 of the Political Code, which provides (after designating Sundays and certain other days as holidays) that: “Every Saturday from twelve o’clock noon until twelve o’clock midnight is a holiday as regards the transaction of business in the public offices of this state, and also in political divisions thereof where laws, ordinances or charters provide that public offices shall be closed on holidays.”

There has been more or less uncertainty as to the legality of certain judicial business transacted on Saturday afternoon ever since the amendment of the code making Saturday afternoon a holiday for certain purposes. In

In Re Dal Porte

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CURTIS, J.

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