Hawks v. State

Pattison, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an appeal from an order of the Circuit Court for Howard County dismissing a petition for a writ of error coram nobis, filed in that court by the appellant. The record discloses that the defendant, with others, was indicted for breaking in a storehouse. The indictment contained three counts.

He was arraigned on December lJth, ³¹ 1930. On the same day, the State abandoned the second and third counts and the defendant pleaded guilty to the first; whereupon he was sentenced to. St. Mary’s Industrial School until he arrived at the age of twenty-one years. On December 22nd, 1930, his sentence to St. Mary’s Industrial School was stricken out, and on the same- day he was sentenced to be confined in the Maryland House of Correction for the term of four years.

On the 2nd day of June, 1931, nearly six months thereafter, the defendant filed his petition in the Circuit Court for Howard County asking for the writ of error eoram nobis, alleging therein that, upon the motion of the State, the judgment and sentence of December llth, 1930, was stricken out by the court on December 22nd, 1930, and, on the same day, the defendant was sentenced to confinement in the Maryland House of Correction for the term of four years. It is further alleged in the petition that the record, fails to disclose that, at the time of the last sentence, the defendant was before the court, and that the first and last sentence differed both as to the place and the period of confinement. The defendant concludes his petition by alleging that because of these alleged facts he was deprived of his rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, section 1, of the Federal Constitution, and that, as a result thereof, the court was without jurisdiction. The writ of error coram nobis is an old common law writ recognized in this state.

Its functions differ from an ordinary writ of error in that the latter raises questions of law, while it deals only with facts which, if known at the time the judgment, was. rendered, would have prohibited its rendition. It is also unlike a writ of error, as it is. addressed to. the court which rendered the judgment, while a writ of error is addressed to some other and superior court. Hawkins v. Bowie, 9 G. & J. 428 ; Bridendolph v. Zellers’ Excrs., 3 Md. 325 ; Kemp v. Cook, 18 Md. 130 ;