Ex-parte Peacock

25 Fla. 478
CourtSupreme Court of Florida
DecidedJune 15, 1889
StatusPublished
Cited by9 cases

This text of 25 Fla. 478 (Ex-parte Peacock) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ex-parte Peacock, 25 Fla. 478 (Fla. 1889).

Opinion

Raney, C. J.:

The first section of the 10th article of the act establishing the municipality of Jacksonville, chapter 3775, Laws of 1887, provides for a municipal court for the trial of all offences against the municipal ordinances, and section 2 enacts that “ all persons convicted by said [488]*488court shall forthwith pay all fines and costs assessed against them, in default whereof they may be committed; provided that if such persons shall appeal within three days from the judgment of the court they shall be released upon entering into bond with good and sufficient security in double the amount of the find and costs assessed against them, conditioned to appear before the court to which the cause is appealed, and to abide by aud perform the judgment thereof.”

The third, fifth and tenth sections of the same article are as follows:

Sec. 3. The Recorder shall keep a docket upon which shall be entered all causes tried in said court; said docket shall show by appropriate entries thereon the style of the cause, the nature of the offence, the j udgmeut of the court, the amount of fines and costs, the satisfaction of the judgment, whether by payment of the fines and costs or by committal or by pardon or remission of the City Judge. The docket shall also shotv the names of the witnesses examined in each case, and the date of the appeal, if granted.

Sec. 5. The Recorder shall return and file with the Clerk of the Appellate Court, within three days, the papers in all cases appealed, and he shall endorse on the warrant in each case the names of the witnesses on behalf of the city.

Sec. 10. Every person committed, after conviction, to the jail or house of correction, shall be required to work for the city, at such labor as his health and strength will permit, within or without said city, not exceeding eight hours each day ; and for such work and laber the person so employed shall be allowed, exclusive of his board, a credit upon his fine and costs, at the rate of seventy-five cents per day, until the whole amount is discharged, when he shall be released. No person shall be compelled to work longer than three months for any one offense.

[489]*489The fourth section of the third article authorizes the Mayor and City Council to establish jails and houses of detention and correction, and to make regulations for the government thereof.

The Constitution of this State, section 11, Article V, gives the Circuit Courts “ final appellate jurisdiction in all civil and criminal cases arising in the County Court, or before the County Judge, of all misdemeanors tried in Criminal Courts, of judgments or sentences in any Mayor’s court, and of all cases arising before Justices of the Peace in counties in which there is no County Court.” Section 18 of the same article gives the County Courts which may be established by the Legislature in any county, original jurisdiction of all misdemeanors, and final appellate jurisdiction in civil cases arising in the courts of Justices of the Peace, and provides that the trial of such appeals shall be de novo at the option of the appellant. In counties, however, where there is a Criminal Court of Record, the County Court has no criminal jurisdiction. Section twenty-two of this article gives Justices of the Peace, in counties having no County Court, jurisdiction “ in such criminal cases, except felonies, as may be prescribed by law,” and provides that “appeals from Justices of the Peace to the Circuit Courts in criminal cases, shall be tried de novo, under such regulations as the Legislature may prescribe.”

The term “ Mayor’s Court ” includes any court organized under legislation pursuant to section 34, of Article Y of the Constitution, which section is as follows: “ The Legislature may establish in incorporated towns and cities, courts for the punishment of offences against municipal ordinances.” 'It is not essential that the court should be presided over by a Mayor. The term was used to designate the class of courts contemplated by the section quoted. [490]*490Such courts have usually been presided over by a Mayor, and called Mayors’ courts in this State.

We cannot say there is no room for argument that the Legislature intended by the legislation set out above, to give the Circuit Court power to try de novo cases appealed from the Municipal Court of Jacksonville, yet we do not think such power can be given it under our Constitution. The language of section 11 of Article Y set out in the preceding paragraph of this opinion, defining the appellate jurisdiction of the Circuit Courts, must in view of the decisions of this court construing similar language in the former Constitution as to the appellate jurisdiction of the Circuit Courts, be held, if considered alone, to exclude such power as-being an exercise of original, and not appellate, jurisdiction. State ex rel. vs Baker, 19 Fla., 19; State ex rel. vs. Vann, Ib., 29; State ex rel. vs. King, 20 Fla., 399; State ex rel. vs. McClellan, 25 Fla., —; 5 So. Rep., 600. These decisions, except the last one of them, were fresh and •must have been prominently in the minds of the framers of the present Constitution and of the people when that instrument was formulated and adopted. The express provisions as to trials de novo in County Courts in civil cases, and in the Circuit Courts in criminal cases on appeal from Justices of the Peace, to be found in sections 18 and 22, indicate a purpose to except such appeals, from the general effect of the language of section eleven referred to. It is a fact, moreover, that the Legislature of 1887 has provided for the trial of appeals to the Circuit Court from Justices of the Peace in civil cases on bills of exception. Vide Chapter 3716, Laws of 1887. See also Chapter 3584, Laws of 1885.

. The provisions of the charter act of the city of Jacksonville involved in this cause must then be construed with reference to the -Constitution which limits the appellate [491]*491jurisdiction of the Circuit Court over Mayors’ courts to a revisory power, and excludes a trial of the cause anew in the Circuit Court, as if the same had never been tried in the lower court.

Under this view of the Constitution and the legislation in question, our opinion is that the judgment to be rendered by the Circuit Court of Duval county on an appeal from the municipal court is one of affirmance or reversal.

The power of the municipal court to commit a person convicted before it if he does not forthwith pay the fine and costs assessed against him, does not rest upon inference or implication, but is expressly given by the second section of the tenth article of the charter act. . Construing this section and the tenth section of the same article and the fourth section of the third article, all of which are set out above, together, it is evident that the commitment is to be to the jail or to the house of correction, and then the convict shall be required to work at the compensation and in the manner provided by the tenth section, and thereby he discharges the fine and costs assessed against him and obtains a release from imprisonment.

' It is argued, however, that the charter act does not give, either expressly or by implication, the power to rearrest and commit a person who, having been convicted, has taken an appeal and been released on giving an appeal bond as required by the statute.

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Bluebook (online)
25 Fla. 478, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ex-parte-peacock-fla-1889.