Stanley Matthews

“ It imposes upon the prisoner no penalty or disability. It cannot affect the case of any individual, except upon his own request, for he must take the first step in its application. When he pleads guilty of murder in the second degree, he knows that its acceptance cannot operate as an acquittal of the higher offense. When he asks to have the conviction reversed, he understands that if his application is granted, the judgment must be set aside with the same effect as if it had never been rendered. ”

“ Every case must be decided upon its own circumstances, as the question continually arises and requires an answer. But it is a familiar principle that, before rights derived under public laws have become vested in particular individuals, the state, for its own convenience and the public good, may amend or repeal the law without just cause of complaint. ”

“ If it be true, in the logic of the law, as it is in all its other applications, that the greater includes the less, then it was competent for that constitution to provide that, as to all judgments in criminal cases thereafter rendered, which should be reversed for error, on the appeal of the defendant, the effect of the reversal should be such as not to be a bar to a subsequent conviction for any crime described in the indictment ”

“ The legislature may abolish courts and create new ones, and it may prescribe altogether different modes of procedure in its discretion, though it cannot lawfully, we think, in so doing, dispense with any of those substantial protections with which the existing law surrounds the person accused of crime. ”

“ It is doubtless quite true that it is difficult to draw the line in particular cases beyond which legislative power over remedies and procedure cannot pass without touching upon the substantial rights of the parties affected, as it is impossible to fix that boundary by any general words. ”

“ But matters of possible defense, which accrue under provisions of positive law, which are arbitrary and technical, introduced for public convenience or from motives of policy, which do not affect the substance of the accusation or defense, and form no part of the res gestae, are continually subject to the legislative will, unless, in the mean time, by an actual application to the particular case, the legal condition of the accused has been actually changed. ”

“ Every law that makes an action done before the passing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal, and punishes such action; (2) every law that aggravates a crime or makes it greater than it was when committed; (3) every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment than the law annexed to the crime when committed ”

“ Remedies must always be under the control of the legislature, and it would create endless confusion in legal proceedings if every case was to be conducted only in accordance with the rules of practice, and heard only by the courts in existence when its facts arose. ”