No person can be punished for a public offense, except upon a legal conviction in a Court having jurisdiction thereof.
Cal. Penal Code § 681
PRELIMINARY PROVISIONS
Applied in 9 court decisions — leading case Fernelius v. Pierce (1943)
Most recently applied in People v. Vasilyan (May 2009)
Enacted 1872.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.