Ex Parte Fraley case brief

Ex Parte Fraley case brief summary
109 P. 295 (1910)

CASE SYNOPSIS

Petitioner prisoner filed an original application for a writ of habeas corpus, by which he sought release on bail pending the final hearing and determination of a charge of murder.

CASE FACTS
The prisoner shot a man to death outside a drug store, stating that the shooting was in revenge for the victim's killing of the prisoner's son. After he was arrested and placed in jail on a murder charge, the prisoner filed an application for a writ of habeas corpus requesting his release on bail pending disposition of the charge against him. The writ was allowed, and a hearing was held at which the prisoner neither testified nor offered witnesses in his behalf.

DISCUSSION

• The court denied bail and discharged the writ. 
• The court held that the uncontradicted testimony demonstrated that the proof of the prisoner's guilt of a capital offense was evident and that he was not entitled to bail as a matter of right because 
• (1) there was no reduction of homicide to manslaughter given sufficient time in which the passion of a reasonable man would have cooled and
• (2) a deliberate killing committed in revenge for an injury inflicted in the past, however near or remote, was murder. 
• The court held that the prisoner failed to meet his burden of showing that he was illegally deprived of his liberty and that factually unsupported opinions by physicians about the prisoner's health did not entitle him to bail.

CONCLUSION
The court discharged the writ of habeas corpus and denied the prisoner's request for bail pending the final hearing and determination of a charge of murder.


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