Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 78, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 March 1909 — TURNED DOWN. [ARTICLE]

TURNED DOWN.

Court Ruses Again st Tom’s Habeas Corpus. GOOD BEHAVIOR DOESN'T APPLY To Indeterminate Sentence Law According to His Ruling, and the Supreme Court Will Likely Be Asked to Take a Guess At It.

Valparaiso, Ind., Feb., 27. —The habeas corpus proceedings brought by Thomas J. McCoy, the former Rensselaer banker, for release from the northern Indiana penitentiary under the good behavior act of 1883, was decided adversely to him by Judge H. B. Tuthill, of the Porter-Laporte Supefior Court, who rendered his opinion this morning. Judge Tuthill holds that the taws ■fcontrolling prison sentences, managemeut, good time and parole constitute a code or system; that in 1897 the General Assembly changed the theretofore rule <>f giving good time merely for proper conduct while confined, and established a new one founded primarily on. reformation and also revolutionized the whole code of management, that when the intent of the General Assembly evidently is to reconstruct a system of law on any subject it is not necessary there should be inconsistency and repugnancy between the new and the old in order that by inference the latter repeal the former by implication. Judge Tuthill rules that a convict sentenced under the indeterminate law of is not entitled to have his sentence reduced by credit for good time, and that McCoy should be held in prison until June 19 next. »

Accordingly the order of the court was entered that McCoy be remanded to the custody of the warden. The through his attorneys, excepted to the ruling and prayed an appeal to the Supreme Court. The prayer was granted. The cause will be presented to the Supreme Court as soon as possible, as both sides desire an early ruling in order that a question of such importance, involving other convicts, may not be left in doubt.