281 N.W. 775 | Minn. | 1938
February 21, 1910, appellant, after due indictment and trial by jury in the district court of Yellow Medicine county, was convicted *449
of murder in the second degree. He was thereupon sentenced to imprisonment for life in the state prison, where he now remains. Over a considerable period before his trial, appellant had been insane and so adjudged by Wisconsin authority. From one of the institutions for the insane in that state he made his escape in May, 1909. In August of that year the murder was committed for which he was tried and convicted. The petition in this case is, of course, a collateral attack upon the judgment of conviction. State ex rel. Newman v. Wall,
The ground upon which it proceeds is that in violation of the statutes then and now in force, R. L. 1905, 1909 Supp. §§ 4756, 5375; 2 Mason Minn. St. 1927, §§ 9915, 10722, there was no inquiry preliminary to trial in the district court to determine the sanity of appellant. It is the statutory duty of the district court in a proper case not to try the person accused of crime if he is "in a state of idiocy, imbecility, lunacy, or insanity, so as to be incapable of understanding the proceedings or making a defense." There is no court record of any inquiry preliminary to trial concerning the then mental condition of petitioner. One of his defenses, litigated and found against him, was that of insanity at the time the act was committed. There is persuasive evidence extraneous to the record that the late Honorable Gorham Powers, then judge of the twelfth judicial district, did hold a preliminary hearing and make formal finding that petitioner was then sane.
All that we put aside, because whatever the statute requires does not go to the jurisdiction of the district court. State ex rel. Kelly v. Wolfer,
Order affirmed.