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126 Pa. 464

Commonwealth v. Wright

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania

Decided May 13, 1889

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania · decided 1889-05-13

No. 142 January Term 1889, Sup. Ct. To tbe number and term above stated, William Malone presented his petition to the Honorable, the Chief Justice and his Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, representing : That at a Court of Quarter Sessions, held at Ridgway, in and for the county of Elk, in the state of Pennsylvania, on November 19, 1884, four separate indictments were returned against him; that said indictments were numbered 12, 13, 14 and 15 November…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1889-05-13

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently May 1951

6 state decisions

2018891890190019101920193019401950decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Per Curiam:

¶1This was a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The petitioner is a convict now undergoing sentence in the Western Penitentiary. The record of his trial and conviction in the Court of Quarter Sessions of Elk county, has been brought up by a writ of certiorari, from which we learn that four separate indictments were returned against him, numbered respectively 12, 18, 14 and 15 of November Sessions 1884; that as to the first indictment, No. 12, a nolle prosequi was entered by leave of court; that to No. 13 he pleaded guilty but was not sentenced; that to No. 14 he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to an imprisonment of four years; and that to No. 15 he pleaded ■ guilty and was sentenced to an imprisonment of four years, to be computed from the expiration of sentence on No. 12. The four years having now fully expired, of the sentence on No. 14, the prisoner prays for this writ of habeas corpus in order that he may be discharged from further confinement, the warden of the penitentiary refusing to discharge him.

¶2It is very evident there was a clerical error in recording the sentence on bill No. 15. There was not, and could not have been, a sentence upon bill No. 12, as a nolle prosequi had been entered thereon. We cannot discharge a prisoner, self-convicted of high crimes, upon such a bald technicality as this. At most, it was a mere slip or misprision of the clerk of the court below in recording the sentence. We therefore decline to allow the writ of habeas corpus, but we do so without prejudice to the petitioner’s right to apply for such writ to the court of Elle county. We also order the record brought here upon the certiorari to be returned to the Court of Quarter Sessions, with leave to that court to amend its record as to justice shall be right.

¶3Petition dismissed.

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