295 N.Y. 92 | NY | 1946
The appeal is from an Appellate Division order of prohibition, which restrains the Supreme Court from continuing to assume jurisdiction in habeas corpus proceedings brought by appellants Katz and Wexler. Katz and Wexler, imprisoned in the New York City penitentiary, sued out their habeas corpus writs on petitions which alleged that the sentences they are serving, imposed by the New York City Court of Special Sessions, were illegal, because, according to petitioners, they had been defrauded into pleading guilty. When those habeas corpus proceedings came on to be heard at Special Term of Supreme Court, the District Attorney moved to dismiss them. Citing Matter of Lyons v. Goldstein (
After the District Attorney's motion to dismiss the habeas corpus proceedings had been denied, he petitioned the Appellate Division for, and was granted, the order of prohibition here appealed from. We thus have the question of whether the New York City Court of Special Sessions has power, in an appropriate situation, to entertain and act upon a motion to it for a vacatur of one of its judgments on the ground that the judgment is void for fraud or similar reason. Such a court is not a court of record (Judiciary Law, §
That Special Sessions is not a court of record does not deprive it of power to entertain "coram nobis" applications. The distinctions between courts of record and not of record, do not answer the question at all. Back in the days when the Surrogate's Court was not one of record, its exercise of such incidental powers was frequently upheld (Sipperley v. Baucus,
Nor should the theory, or the fact, that courts of Special Sessions are "noncontinuous" and become "functus officio" at the end of every case, leave them powerless, after judgment, to deal with frauds practiced on them. Despite that lack of continuity, they could at common law (before the passage of Penal Law, § 2188, or Code Crim. Pro., § 470-a) suspend sentence (People ex rel. Dunnigan v. Webster, supra; People ex rel.Forsyth v. Court of Sessions,
Finally, a holding that Special Sessions has no right to deal with such a matter by way of "coram nobis" would deprive these appellants of their constitutional rights to due process. The writ of habeas corpus they cannot use, since their convictions were by a court which had jurisdiction of their persons and of the crimes they were charged with, and power to declare the particular sentences meted out to them (see Morhous case,supra; also People ex rel. Carr v. Martin,
Neither party questions the propriety of using a prohibition proceeding as the method for bringing the present dispute before the Appellate Division.
The order appealed from should be affirmed, without costs.
LOUGHRAN, Ch. J., LEWIS, CONWAY, THACHER, DYE and MEDALIE, JJ., concur.
Order affirmed.