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166 Mo. 561

State v. Baty

Supreme Court of Missouri

Decided February 4, 1902

Supreme Court of Missouri · decided 1902-02-04

— Hon. B. 8. Byors, Special Judge. No record of an adjournment appears, from the August term, 1900, to the first Monday in October, 1900. This fact can only appear by record. Milan v. Pemberton, 12 Mo. 394; Dennison v. County of St. Louis, 33 Mo. 168; R. S. 1899, secs. 3603, 1604, 1605, 1679. In criminal causes jurisdiction can not be conferred by consent of the accused. City of Kansas v. Knott, 78 Mo. 356. An adjourned term can be held only in the way pointed out by statute.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““If the record is silent about a matter necessary to confer jurisdiction, or more properly, to cause it to attach in the particular instance, the existence of such matter (nothing appearing of record to the contrary) will be presumed., . . . ” [State v. Baty, 166 Mo. l. c. 564.]”

quoted by 1 later decision, including 237 Mo. App. 841 - Steinbaum v. Wallace, Admr.

Relies on Huxley v. Harrold · Reno v. Jarrell · State v. Harkins

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Affirmed · Decided 1902-02-04

How this case has been cited

Cited by 21 later decisions — most recently January 1944

21 state decisions

11019021910192019301940decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

SHEEWOOD, P. J.

¶1The defendant, on a charge of murder in the first degree, was convicted of the second degree of that crime and his punishment assessed at ten years in the penitentiary.

¶2The indictment charged that defendant killed George H. Hopkins, by giving him three mortal wounds on the head by striking, hitting and beating him on the head with a rock.

¶3The evidence in this case can not be looked into by reason of the fact that the bill of exceptions has not been properly identified; nothing in the transcript to show where it begins.

¶4There is nothing in the record proper which precedes and identifies what may be supposed to be the bill. And in the concluding entry, after entitling the case, there is this recital made in vacation: “And now comes defendant by his attorney, A. K. Monroe, and files his bill of exceptions as per rule of court.”

¶5Hnder the ruling in Reno v. Fitz Jarrell, 163 Mo. 411 (in which is given the usual and proper formula for identifying the bill of exceptions), the bill here has not been properly identified.

¶6*564As to the record proper, no error has been discovered in that.

¶7In reference to the record entries pertaining to this cause, the record shows that this cause was by agreement set for trial on the first Monday of October, 1900. This agreement was made on the twenty-fifth day of August, 1900, during the regular August term of the circuit court of Osage county. The defendant asserts that the record does not show the adjournment of the court from the month of August, or at any date, to meet on the first Monday of October. The record does show, however, that court met on the first day of October, 19.00, it being the seventh day of the regular August term, 1900, and being the first Monday in October; and that it so met pursuant to adjournment.

¶8Every presumption will be indulged in favor of the correctness of the action of a court of general jurisdiction, and that it proceeds by right and not by wrong. [Huxley v. Harrold, 62 Mo. 516, and cas. cit.; State v. Harkins, 100 Mo. 666.]

¶9If the record is silent about a matter necessary to confer jurisdiction, or more properly, to cause it to attach in the particular instance, the existence of such matter (nothing appearing of record to the contrary) will be presumed, and it will be presumed that where some regular and formal intermediate entry should have been made, which does not appear in the transcript, such absence was occasioned by the misprision of the clerk, and will not, therefore, operate a reversal of the judgment.

¶10Eor these reasons, judgment affirmed.

All concur.
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