Watkins v. State

Bartol, J., delivered the opinion of this court. This case comes before us from the Criminal Court of Baltimore on a writ of error issued by the Circuit Court for Baltimore City, and directed to the Criminal Court. The plaintiff in error was indicted for the larceny of a silver watch, valued at six dollars, and, upon a verdict of “guilty,” judgment was pronounced by the court, which, it is contended, was erroneous. As the alleged error is in the judgment rendered, it is proper for us first to ascertain what judgment was, in point of fact, rendered.

In the record transmitted to this court, it is thus stated: “ Therefore, it is considered by the Court here, that the said free negro, Thomas Watkins, be sold out of the State of Maryland, at public sale, as a slave for the period of five years, under the provisions of the Act of Assembly in such case made and provided.'1'’ By an amendment of the record, it appears that the judgment rendered by the court and entered upon the docket., was as follows: “Judgment—to be sold for the period of five years out of the limits of the State, from March 3ls£, 1859. Transcript sent.” It is said by the attorney for the State “that the judgment extended in the Record, is nothing more than a technical amplification of the docket entry according to its legal meaning and effect.” If this were so, no objection on that ground could be made to the proceeding; it would find its sanction, both in the necessity of the case, and in the approved practice of courts of justice. In Weighorst vs. The State, 7 Md. Rep., 450 , this court said, “It has always been the habit of clerks to take minutes and docket entries of the court’s proceedings, and ⁴²² subsequently to enter them at length, in technical language, according to the established forms. This is necessary to the dispatch of business, and relieves these officers from the inconvenient, if pot impracticable, labor of making correct full-records of proceedings as they transpire.” That was said in a case where the verdict of the jury, as set out in form upon the record, had the same legal effect and intendment, as the brief entry thereof made by the clerk on the docket.

But, in all cases, great care must be observed to state the proceedings correctly, and not, under pretence of amplifying the docket entries, to alter the substance and legal effect of the verdict rendered by the jury or the judgment pronounced by the court. To allow this, would be to deprive the citizen of the safeguards thrown around his life or liberty by the Constitution and the law, and to subject him to the consequences of the ignorance or mistake of the clerk. Without intending to impute unworthy motives to any one, we have no hesitation in saying that the judgment which was actually rendered by the court in this case, pronounced in the presence of the prisoner, entered upon the docket and transmitted to the sheriff under the solemnity of the court’s seal, to be executed by him, is not the same judgment set out in the record and originally transmitted to this court for review. The discrepancy between the two is obvious and material.

By the former the sheriff is not directed to sell at public sale, but “'to sell for the period of five years,” &c., thus leaving it to the discretion of the sheriff to sell the convict, if he chooses, at private sale, while, by the Act of Assembly, it is the duty of the court, in its judgment,