Lawrence E. Wilson, Warden, San Quentin Penitentiary v. Howard Reagan

This appeal is from an order of the District Court in which the appellee’s Petition for Writ of Habeas Corpus was granted.

Appellee is a California state prisoner, confined pursuant to conviction and sentence by a California court for the California offense of armed robbery.

At the time of the commission of the offense and his arrest on August 1, 1958, appellee was 17 years of age, an age when he might have been treated as a juvenile offender. Cal. Welfare & Inst’ns Code, § 1730. At a California Juvenile Court hearing on August 25, 1958, when appellee was not represented by counsel, it was determined by the judge of the Juvenile Court that appellee was unfit for Juvenile Court treatment. Thereafter, on September 15, 1958, appellee, charged as an adult, entered a plea of guilty in the California Superior Court. The presiding judge, the same judge who had conducted the previous Juvenile Court hearing, imposed an indeterminate sentence of five years to life, the maximum sentence provided by California law. Rejected were two alternative choices of punishment, the granting of probation and the placing of appellee, in the light of his age, in the custody of the California Youth…