In re Fil Ki
Before: Works
Synopsis
Contempt—Imprisonment—Hard Labor—Power of Supervisors— Police Regulation — Habeas Corpus.—A judgment of, imprisonment for contempt of court cannot authorize or justify imprisonment at hard labor; nor have the board of supervisors any power to make a police regulation ordering persons imprisoned for contempt, or as a means adopted to enforce collection of a fine, to be worked on the streets or other public places. A person committed for contempt will be discharged from hard labor on the streets upon writ of habeas corpus, but will not be discharged from imprisonment by reason of being put at such hard labor.
Id.—Criminal Nature of Contempt—Misdemeanor.—A contempt is a quasi criminal offense against the court, for which a party may be fined and imprisoned, as for a specific criminal offense, but it is not a misdemeanor in the strict sense of the term.
Works, J. This is an application for a discharge of the petitioners under a writ of habeas corpus. The allegations of the petition tending to show the illegality of the alleged imprisonment are as follows:—
“ That the petitioners were held by the supreme court of this state at first to be legally imprisoned, but since such holding the sheriff of said county of Yuba has placed petitioners at hard labor daily; that petitioners are held only by virtue of a warrant or judgment in contempt proceedings, and by no other warrant or judgment; that they are and each of them is daily caused to labor at hard labor upon the county highways or otherwise; that such hard labor for such (held) contempt of court is illegal, and in conflict with the substantial rights of said petitioners, in that the imprisonment is cruel and unusual (in most counties) for contempt for the court so holding by its judgment.”
[202]The sheriff makes return that he holds the petitioners-by virtue of a judgment of the superior court of Yuba County, convicting the defendants of contempt of court in disobeying an order of injunction in a civil case, and adjudging that they pay a fine of five hundred dollars each, and that in default of payment thereof they be imprisoned in the county jail of said county at the rate of one day for each dollar of said fine until the same is fully paid and satisfied.
This j udgment, it will be seen, only authorizes the imprisonment of the petitioners in the county jail, and that not as a punishment, but as a means of collecting such fine.
It was contended at the argument by the respondent that the detention of the petitioners at hard labor on the streets was justified and made lawful by a resolution of the board of supervisors of the county, by which it was provided that the sheriff should work and cause to be worked such convicted prisoners as were or might be confined in the county jail of said county.
Both the petition and return are so defective as not to present the real question intended to be presented, and which was argued at the hearing. The petition does not show that at the time the application for the writ was made the petitioners were imprisoned elsewhere than in the county jail, but that they “were daily caused to labor at hard labor.”
The return is equally faulty, in that it does not allege' that any order of the board of supervisors was made authorizing the working of the petitioners on the streets or other highways. But counsel on both sides seem to have regarded these defects as unimportant, and have conceded the facts as above stated, and we decide the question thus presented.
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