In Re Germino

Petitioner was convicted of the crime of rape in the superior court of Fresno County, alleged to have been committed in said county on the ninth day of April, 1917, upon a certain female of the age of twelve and a half years. On the fifteenth day of February, 1918, he was sentenced by said court to a term of not less than five years. Thereupon, and in due time after the pronouncement of said sentence, the petitioner was delivered into the custody of the warden of the state prison at San Quentin, upon a commitment duly issued upon said judgment of sentence. On the nineteenth day of April, 1918, the superior court of said county, after declaring that the sentence so pronounced, being under the indeterminate sentence law (Pen. Code, sec. 1168, as added by Stats. 1917, p. 665), was invalid, by reason of the fact that the crime for which the petitioner was so sentenced was committed prior to the time at which the law authorizing and requiring judgments of sentence in criminal cases to be indeterminate as to the term of sentence went into effect, made an order in legal form for the return of the prisoner before said court, then and there to receive a sentence upon said conviction,…