In re Estate of Mulholland

The petitioner was convicted in the police court of the city and county of San Francisco, January 16,1893, of the crime of battery, and sentenced *528 to pay a fine of one hundred dollars, or in default of the payment thereof, to be imprisoned at the rate of one day for each dollar of .said fine remaining unpaid.

The petitioner claims that the court below had no authority to imprison him for more than fifty days; that the sentence ought to have been no greater than one day for each two dollars of the fine. In support of this contention he relies upon section 1205 of the Penal Code as amended March 19, 1891. (Stats. 1891, p. 52.) That section, as originally incorporated into the code, provided that the judgment should specify the extent of imprisonment, “which could not exceed one day for every two dollars of the fine.” Section 1446 of the Penal Code, relating to proceedings in justice’s and police courts, provided that a judgment that the defendant pay a fine might also direct that he be imprisoned until the fine is satisfied, in the proportion of one day’s imprisonment for every two dollars of the fine. Both of these sections were amended in 1874 by inserting the words “ one…