Matter of Application of Winston

This is a petition for a writ of habeas

corpus. The prisoner is held by the sheriff of Alameda County by virtue of a commitment issued by a justices’ court after a judgment of conviction, which has been affirmed on appeal by the superior court. The imprisonment is alleged to be unlawful for the sole reason that the complaint upon which the prosecution was founded was insufficient to confer jurisdiction on the justices’ court. So much of the complaint as is material here reads as follows:

The objections to this charge are that it does not allege the particular acts of force and violence; that it does not conform to the requirements of section 950, or section 1426 of the Penal Code, that it does not state any offense and does not inform the defendant of the nature of the chai ge against him so that he could plead the judgment thereon as a bar to a subsequent prosecution for the same offense.

In charging a misdemeanor of which justices’ courts have jurisdiction it is not necessary that the complaint should conform to the requirements of section 950 of the Penal Code. It is only necessary in such cases to conform to the requirements of section 1426. Justices’ courts have…