People v. Pratt

Foote, C. The defendant was convicted of the crime of forgery, anA has appealed from the judgment rendered, and from an order denying his motion for a new trial.

After the cause had reached this court upon appeal, the defendant filed a petition, under section 1174 of the Penal Code, to have certain bills of exception settled, which he claimed had been refused to be allowed by the judge of the court below.

[347]It appears that the bills were prepared, amendments proposed, and they were then left with the judge for allowance or settlement. No further attention seems to have been paid to the matter for some time, nearly two years having elapsed since the bills were placed in the hands of the judge, another voluminous bill of exceptions having meanwhile been settled and allowed, which is in the transcript here, but contains none of the exceptions now prayed to be allowed. On the 14th of July, 1888, for the first time (the case being then here on appeal), application was made to the trial judge to settle and allow .the first bills, when he stated that he knew nothing of them, and that they were not in his possession.

Passing the question as to whether the proceedings instituted by the defendant, as to proper notice to the parties concerned, are in accordance with the rules usual in the appellate court as to such a matter, it is evident that the defendant has not shown such a refusal on the part of the judge below to settle and allow the bills as brings the matter within the section of the Penal Code, supra. His petition should therefore be denied.

Conceding, without deciding, that the special plea to the jurisdiction of the court can be considered now, as also the action of that tribunal in overruling and in refusing to hear evidence to establish it, it appears to us that the court was not in error.

The facts set up in the plea, and the evidence offered, are to the effect that the defendant was living in Japan, as he was entitled to do, as a citizen of the United States, under a treaty existing between these two governments, when “without any charges having been entered against him, or any legal examination had as is provided by the laws of Japan or the laws of the United States, he was by force of arms, and against his will, brought thence into the city and county of San Francisco, in this state, where he has since been by force of arms detained, and so continues to be.”