In Re Garbarini

This is a proceeding on hateas corpus. Petitioner was arrested and convicted upon a complaint filed in a justice court which designated the offense as “crime of killing a doe, a misdemeanor”, it being therein charged that defendant at a certain time and place within the jurisdiction of the court “did wilfully and unlawfully kill a doe”.

The defendant was by the court tried and found guilty and a judgment was rendered finding the defendant “guilty as charged”.

Petitioner now urges that the complaint as filed did not state a public offense and that the judgment does not state any offense of which petitioner was found guilty.

It is obvious that the complaint was intended to charge a violation of that part of section 626e of the Penal Code, which provides that ‘ ‘ every person who hunts, pursues, takes or destroys . . . any female deer ... is guilty of a misdemeanor”. Petitioner contends that a “doe” may be—and the word is so defined in all the recognized dictionaries— either a female deer, female antelope, female hare, female rabbit or a female kangaroo, and inasmuch as the allegation of the complaint is consistent with the innocence of the defendant it cannot support the…