Philip Carl Ornelas v. United States

This is an appeal in a 28 U.S.C. § 2255 proceeding from a judgment of the district court denying a motion to vacate and set aside a judgment and life sentence in a jury tried case. In it appellant, an Indian, was convicted in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada on June 24, 1954, of a second degree murder of one Daisy Morgan (a 73 or 74 year old Indian woman) “within Indian country” near Reno, Nevada, in violation of Section 1111 of 18 U.S.C. Federal jurisdiction for the trial under 18 U.S.C. § 1153 is not questioned, since Daisy Morgan was killed in the Reno Indian Colony. There was no appeal from this conviction.

Appellant on April 5, 1954, pleaded guilty to an indictment hereafter described. On April 21, 1954, he withdrew this plea and pleaded not guilty. Appellant contends that he had nothing to do with the withdrawal of the guilty plea, and that the court not only set aside the plea, but dismissed the indictment, and hence there was no valid indictment in effect when he was tried. This contention is objectionably frivolous since the indictment dismissed is plainly one in a different case having a different number.

The indictment read in its pertinent…