JACOB O. PRATT, Appellant, v. REPUBLIC OF LIBERIA, Appellee.
APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT, FIRST JUDICIAL CIRCUIT, MONTSERRADO COUNTY.
Argued April 23, 1935. Decided April 26, 1935.
1. A defendant summoned to appear before a court of a justice of the peace has the right to remove his case by change of venue to another officer of the same grade, provided that the case be not removed beyond the territorial limits of the community in which the writ was issued.
2. This shall be done by notice to the issuing justice or magistrate before any issue of law or fact is joined, and by oral or written notice.
3. There is no provision that any such change of venue in the Municipal District of Monrovia shall be to the next magistrate in order of seniority.
4. The rendition of a judgment is the act of pronouncing judgment, after the trial and submission of a case, in language which finally determines the rights of the parties to the action.
5. There is no rendition of final judgment until the conclusions reached are actually pronounced in open court.
On appeal from a judgment of the Circuit Court refusing to grant a motion in arrest of judgment and affirming conviction of the appellant on a charge of assault and battery, judgment affirmed and fine increased.
A. B. Ricks for appellant. R. F. D. Smallwood, County Attorney of Montserrado County, by appointment of the Attorney General, for appellee.
MR. JUSTICE GRIGSBY delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case is before this Court upon an appeal from the Circuit Court of the First Judicial Circuit.
On the 17th day of August in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred thirty-four, Jacob 0. Pratt, defendant, now appellant, was arrested for assault and battery based upon the sworn complaint of John Porte, the private prosecutor in this prosecution, which matter came on for trial in the Municipal Court of the Commonwealth District of Monrovia, Associate Magistrate John Henry Smythe presiding.
To said complaint appellant pled “not guilty”; hence a trial began which resulted in a judgment against appellant. To said judgment and other rulings of the trial magistrate, appellant excepted and prayed an appeal to the Circuit Court of the First Judicial Circuit. The said Circuit Court, having read the records in said case on appeal to it and carefully considered the points of law raised in a motion in arrest of judgment filed during the hearing, adjudged that said motion be denied and affirmed the judgment of the Municipal Court. Appellant has come hither contending that the trial of the municipal court was irregular, and that the presiding associate magistrate aforesaid acted illegally, and moreover that the final judgment of the said municipal court, as well as that of the Judge of the Circuit Court of the First Judicial Circuit, should all be declared null and void, and the appellant further prays this Honorable Court to reverse the same and award a new trial for the following reasons, to wit:
“Because upon the arrest of defendant in the court below he, the said defendant, gave notice of a change of venue from Police Magistrate George W. Stubblefield to the next or Senior Associate Magistrate F. James Bull as appears on the back of said writ of arrest and from the records in this case, sheet number 6; Mr. John Henry Smythe nevertheless assumed jurisdiction over and tried said case as Associate Magistrate. The appellant therefore submits that the whole trial and his final judgment thereon are therefore void for want of legal jurisdiction.”
This count suggests to the mind of the Court a perusal of the Act which created the area known as the City of Monrovia into a Commonwealth District. In said enactment, section four, we have a statement of the boundaries and extent of said Commonwealth District; and coming thence to section eight, the following provision occurs:
“That there shall be established within the city limits one Municipal Court, which shall be presided over by a police Magistrate, who shall be appointed by the President by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, and within the limits of the City shall have the power and jurisdiction of the Justice of the Peace over the violation of all City Ordinances, regulations and laws of the Republic, and shall be governed by the provisions of the law relating to the Justices of the Peace. Nothing in this Act shall in anywise be construed to prohibit the appointment of Associate Magistrates, provided the number of said Magistrates for the City shall not exceed four.” (L. 1921-22, ch. IX, § 8.)
There are three rules governing the change of venue in vogue within this Republic which taken in order of time of enactment are : 1) In civil cases triable in a court of record; 2) in cases triable before a justice of the peace; and 3) in indictable criminal offenses; but, in this case we are only to deal with that class numbered 2 above.
According to the act of the Legislature of Liberia passed by limitation at its session of 1896-97, printed on page 16 of the acts of said year, section 2:
“…no defendant summoned before a Justice Court shall be deprived of the right of removing his or their case from that Justice of the Peace before another, providing however that the case is not removed beyond the limit of the settlement in which the plaintiff resides.”
According to that of 1908-9, page 48, section :
“And all defendants arrested or summoned in any case in Justice of the Peace Court, and provided that no case shall be removed beyond the City or settlement in which the Justice of the Peace issuing the original writ in the case resides, due notice of the desire to remove any case shall be made known to the Justice of the Peace issuing the writ commencing the action before joining issue by the defendant either upon law or fact; verbal or written notice to such Justice of the Peace shall be sufficient notice of such removal. . . .”
These provisions made in the law, the only relevant ones we have been able to find, do not appear to us to support the contention of Mr. Ricks that on a change of venue from a justice of the peace or a city magistrate return of the writ must be made to the next nearest official of the same grade; nor to justify his argument that in the Commonwealth District of Monrovia the senior associate magistrate is the only one who can sit when the chief magistrate has been thus disqualified. For in the Municipal Court of Monrovia, all the magistrates have their offices located in the same building and derive their authority from the same source. Hence, if a defendant expresses a fear that the chief magistrate is for any reason psychologically incapable of doing him justice, and asks for a change of venue, any other magistrate in commission (not necessarily the senior), to whom the officer returns the precept is, in our opinion, authorized to assume jurisdiction and hear and determine the case. The said trial magistrate being one in commission duly clothed with authority to function as such, there appears to be nothing in the said act which could invalidate his official acts done in the said trial, as he could not be divested of the authority to so act under the statute above cited, or the law relating to a change of venue controlling the practice of magistrates’ courts. Acts of 1921-22, 8, § 8 ; Acts of 1908-09, 48, § 5.
The second point raised in the motion in arrest of judgment is that the said trial magistrate should have granted the motion in arrest of judgment of appellant in that (a) the said trial magistrate did render two separate and distinct final judgments on different dates as appears on the back of said original writ of arrest and which the appellant submits is illegal; and (b) the whole record shows very conclusively that before the magistrate had heard any of the witnesses for the defendant he had entered his first final judgment against said defendant which is contrary to law; and (c) the act of John Henry Smythe, the trial associate magistrate aforesaid, in entering a final judgment on the back of the original writ before he had heard any of the testimony for the appellant, was not only a violation of all procedure, rule and law in criminal trials but a perversion of the constitutional rights of the said defendant, now appellant, and also shows that the said trial magistrate was actually disqualified to try said case, since he had already made up his mind as to the guilt of the accused, and his final judgment before he heard the witnesses for the defendant.
This Court quotes with approval the following :
“The act, after the trial and final submission of a case, of pronouncing judgment in language which finally determines the rights of the parties to the action and leaves nothing more to be done except the entry of the judgment by the clerk constitutes the rendition of a judgment.” 18 Ency. of Pl. & Prac. 429.
“The judgment is complete when properly declared, though the mechanical act of recording the same has not been performed.” Sieber v. Frink, 7 Colo. 148, 151 (1883).
There is no rendition of a final judgment until the conclusions reached are actually pronounced in open court. The notes of his findings made by the trial judge during the progress of the case are not the final judgment as contended by appellant, but only aides memoires of his developing views as the trial progresses. This is in harmony with the views expressed by this Court in the case Seton v. Republic, decided January 18th of this year, supra p. 238. In that case the contention of appellant in the r2th count of his bill of exceptions was that while defendant was on the stand testifying in his own behalf, a juror, one Emedy Delaney, exclaimed “This man is on the stand talking a lot of foolishness, and has me sleeping here in this cold house. I was not there when he was eating that Customs money.”
Counsel for prisoner in the Seton case contended here that the said expression was so indicative of bias on the part of said juror as to warrant the verdict’s being set aside, and a new trial awarded. This Court, then, here reaffirms what was said on page 246 supra commencing :
“Had an expression of this import been made . . . be-fore he was impanelled, or at the beginning of the trial . . . it could have been construed as such an indication of bias as to raise a doubt of his ability psycho-logically to impartially weigh the evidence to be adduced. . . . ‘The fact that, during the progress of a trial, a juror made remarks indicating a leaning towards one or the other of the parties will not of it-self furnish ground for a new trial, . . . it not being shown that the juror was so prejudiced as to be unable to give the accused a fair and impartial trial. . . ”
From a perusal of the records it appears that there has been but one final judgment pronounced in the case of which the Court in fairness should take judicial notice, and it is found dated August 20, 1934, which, in our opinion, is sufficiently clear and distinct and void of any ambiguity whatever. The purported judgment of the 17th of said month referred to by Mr. Ricks was never pronounced, or attempted to be pronounced by the said trial Magistrate, but appears to have been completely obliterated as the back of the writ discloses. The appellant has therefore sustained no injury or inconvenience therefrom to warrant the second count contained in the said motion in arrest of judgment. As such the judge did not err in overruling the said count.
Evidence is that which enables the court to arrive at an unerring conviction in the course of the trial ; and as such, the opinion of a trial court begins to be formed the moment a witness starts to depose and continues until parties litigant rest evidence, and the court retires for deliberation upon the issues presented for the court’s consideration and final judgment.
These counts, therefore, not being well founded in law, the Court says that after considering the evidence adduced in the court below, the proof is clear and unerring that the appellant was the aggressor in the fight which ensued between appellant and the private prosecutor, John Porte, at John Porte’s own home, which in law is his castle, under circumstances particularly aggravating; and hence it is of opinion that the judgment of the court below be affirmed with an amendment that the fine imposed by the lower court should be increased to forty-five dollars instead of thirty-six dollars ; and it is so ordered.
Affirmed.