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36 Ind. 528

Ex parte Wiley

Indiana Supreme Court

Decided November 15, 1871

Indiana Supreme Court · decided 1871-11-15

<p>Habeas Corpus.—Jurisdiction.—A writ of habeas corpus must issue from a court of the county where the person applying for the writ is restrained of his liberty, except when the judge of said court is unable or incompetent to hear and determine the application.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1871-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently October 1952

5 state decisions

30187118801890190019101920193019401950decided

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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Pettit, J.

¶1Wiley was a prisoner in the southern state prison, at Jeffersonville, in Clark county, under a sentence for life by the Decatur Circuit Court on a trial and conviction of murder. He made application to the Decatur Circuit Court, in session, for a writ of habeas corpus to relieve him from imprisonment, on the ground that the judge who presided at his trial had no power or jurisdiction to hold the court or try him.

¶2The Decatur Circuit Court refused the writ and dismissed the petition. Exception was taken, and appeal to this court.

¶3The appellant’s attorneys have presented us with an able and learned printed brief on the question of the jurisdiction of the judge who tried and passed sentence on the petitioner; but a supplemental brief admits that the Decatur Circuit Court had no jurisdiction in the habeas corpus case. See 3 Ind. Stat. 285, sec. 716. The attorneys for the appellant, nevertheless, ask us to pass upon the questions presented in their brief, as to the jurisdiction of the judge who tried and sentenced the prisoner, but we decline to do so, because we have more questions legally and legitimately before us than we can examine and decide, and we have no time to write dissertations or amateur lectures on questions of law not properly before us.

¶4The court committed no error in refusing the writ and dismissing the petition.

¶5The judgment is affirmed, at the costs of the appellant.

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