Conviction

In practice

Ina general sense, the result of a criminal trial which ends in a judgment or sentence that the prisoner is guilty as charged. Finding a person guilty by verdict of a jury.

1 Bish. Crim, Law, § 223.

A record of the summary procecdings upon any penal statute before one or more justices of the peace or other persons duly authorized, ina case Where the offender has been con- - vicled andsentenced.

Holthouse.

Summary conviction is one which takes place betore an authorized magistrate without the intervention of a jury. In ordinary phrase, the meaning of the word “conviction” is the finding by the jury of a verdict that the accused is guilty. But, in legal parlance, it often denotes the final judgment of the court.

69.N. Y. 109.

The ordinary legal meaning of “conyietion,” when used to designate a particular stage of acriminal prosecution triable hy a jury, is the confession of the accused in open court, or the verdictreturned against bim by the jury, which ascertains and pub- ‘ishea the fact of his guilt, while “judgment” or “sentence” is the appropriate word to denote tha action of the court before which the trial is had, deflaring the consequences to the convict of the fact upon exceptions taken by the accused during the trial, is granted after conviction, within the meaning of a constitutional restriction upon granting pardon before conviction. When, indeed, the word “conviction” is used to describe the effact of the guilt of the accused as judicially provad in one case, when pleaded or given in evidence iu another, itis sometimes used in a more compre hensive sense, including thea jndement of tha court upon the yerdiet er conlession of guilt; aa, for instance, in speaking of the plea of autrefols eonviel, or of the effect of guilt, judicially aseer tained, as a disqualification of the conviot.

109 Mass, 323. See 17 Pick. 380.