Ex parte Neustadt

The petitioner was convicted of obtaining money by false pretenses, and sentenced, on March 31, 1888, to imprisonment in the county jail for the term of one year, to pay a fine of $2,249, and in default of payment thereof, to be imprisoned one day for every dollar remaining unpaid, the latter imprisonment to commence at the end of the one-year term of imprisonment first ordered.

The penalty provided by section 532 of the Penal Code, under which the petitioner was convicted, is “imprisonment in the county jail not exceeding one year, and by a fine not exceeding three times the value of the money or property so obtained.”

The legislature did not intend, we think, by this provision to make it possible to impose a penalty of life *274 imprisonment for a misdemeanor such as the offense named in section 532, or any other.

In People v. Righetti, 66 Cal. 184 , the court, in Department, held that section 1205 of the Penal Code applies to cases of fine, whether the fine be coupled with a sentence of imprisonment, or whether the fine stand alone as the only punishment. The correctness of that decision may be doubted. The section provides: “A judgment that the defendant pay afine may also…