Limits
Writs of coram nobis cannot be used to address issues of law previously ruled upon by the court but only to address errors of fact that were not known by the defendant at time of trial or plea bargain, and were knowingly withheld during and after trial or plea agreement from judges and defendants by prosecutors; and which might have altered the verdict were they presented at the trial; or in the case of a plea agreement, where the defendant would not have agreed to the plea had he been made aware of the unknown fact.
An example would be a circumstance such as a defendant agrees to a plea agreement but the fact that the resulting conviction will have a direct consequence, such as lifetime registration as a sex offender, has been withheld from the defendant. Obviously, the prosecutor is aware of such a thing, and defendant's attorney should certainly also be aware. Where this fact is withheld from the defendant, he is now prejudiced in that had he known the fact of lifetime registration he would not have pleaded guilty. The writ of coram nobis can be used to overturn such a plea agreement. If the defendant is still in custody however, he would petition for relief under habeas corpus.
Read more about this topic: Coram Nobis
Famous quotes containing the word limits:
“This teaching is not practical in the sense in which the New Testament is. It is not always sound sense in practice. The Brahman never proposes courageously to assault evil, but patiently to starve it out. His active faculties are paralyzed by the idea of caste, of impassable limits of destiny and the tyranny of time.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The great disadvantage, and advantage, of the small urban bourgeois is his limited outlook. He sees the world as a middle- class world, and everything outside these limits is either laughable or slightly wicked.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“Mathematics alone make us feel the limits of our intelligence. For we can always suppose in the case of an experiment that it is inexplicable because we don’t happen to have all the data. In mathematics we have all the data ... and yet we don’t understand. We always come back to the contemplation of our human wretchedness. What force is in relation to our will, the impenetrable opacity of mathematics is in relation to our intelligence.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)