Báez Montalvo v. Delgado
Báez Montalvo v. Delgado
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Alleging that these second sentences by the Arecibo Court constituted double jeopardy for the same offenses, and furthermore, an action without jurisdiction, petitioner-appellant requested the Superior Court of Puerto Rico, Arecibo Part, in a petition of Habeas Corpus, to order petitioner’s immediate release from jail. The trial court denied the petition for the following reason: “This is a Habeas Corpus proceeding challenging the legality of his imprisonment for the reason that he was found guilty of the same offenses in two different jurisdictions and he raises the question of double jeopardy. If that is the case, the plea of having been jeopardized once for the same offense is a privilege of defendant. In such a situation, in view of the case of People v. Huertas, affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States, the petition of Habeas Corpus is dismissed.”
Now then, the question presented in this case is the possible nullity of the second sentence where' it deals with offenses originated in the same criminal act, the correction of which had already been disposed of by virtue of the first sentence imposed by the court with jurisdiction over the matter, according to the place where the criminal act was committed and the distribution of judicial jurisdiction.
Relying on the constitutional principle that a person accused of a crime shall be tried by 12 jurors/residents of his district — See, for example, Art. II, § 11 of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico — the rule- has been established that the information shall refer to the place in which the crime was committed and the trial shall be held in the same place. It hence follows that as a general rule the plea of former jeopardy is available only in the district court in which the former proceeding was. held, because if the crime had been committed in another district in which the second prosecution was pending, then the former prosecution would have been held without jurisdiction, the first sentence would be null and void and there -could be no former
Little or scarce discussion is necessary to support the assertion that a second sentence for a crime for which defendant had already been sentenced is wholly null and void. If we were not of the opinion that this is a judgment rendered without jurisdiction, which is correct, still our power of supervision over the due and orderly administration of justice by trial courts would be sufficient authority to prevent said anomaly.
There is no doubt as to the availability of Habeas Corpus proceedings in case of null and void sentences: Valentín v. Warden, 80 P.R.R. 450, 460, 462 (Hernández Matos) (1958); Coll Moya v. Warden, Municipal Jail, 89 P.R.R. 221, 228 (Dávila) (1963).
For the reasons stated the judgment rendered by the Superior Court of Puerto Rico, Arecibo Part, on June 25, 1963, will be reversed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.