Ex parte Owens

Decided June 15, 1875

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1875-06-15

This was an application for mandamus to compel the judge of the 8th judicial circuit (Hon. H. D. Clayton) to strike from the docket the case of the State v. Owens, on the ground that it had been discontinued. The petition shows that the petitioner was indicted for assault and battery at the Fall term, 1868, of the circuit court of Pike, and at that term gaye bond for his appearance as required by law.

Relies on Drinkard v. State · Jones v. Scott

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1875-06-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 7 later decisions — most recently March 1929

6 state decisions

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.

¶1The record does not disclose a discontinuance of the prosecution. When a cause civil or criminal is regularly introduced into a court of record, although continuances from term to term are not regularly entered as they ought to be, and a failure to enter them is a gross dereliction of clerical duty, they are presumed, unless the record discloses some act of the party plaintiff, by which a chasm in the proceedings is produced. Drinkard v. The State, 20 Ala. 9; 2 Brick. Dig. 369, § 112.

¶2The failure of the presiding judge to sign the minutes of the court does not affect the validity of the record. Bartlett & Waring v. Lang, 2 Ala. 61.

¶3The application for mandamus is denied.