Hodgeman v. Olsen

Citations

• 86 Wash. 615
• 150 P. 1122
• 1915 Wash. LEXIS 1016

Syllabus

<p>Evidence — Judicial Notice. Judicial notice will be taken of the custom of penal institutions to take and preserve photographs and measurements of prisoners.</p> <p>Reformatories — Regulation — Identification of Prisoners — Powers of Managers — Statutes. The legislature, by outlining, in broad and general terms (Rem. & Bal. Code, § 8577 et seq.), the powers and duties 'of the board of managers of the state reformatory, without any complete system of specific rules or regulations, has by necessary implication accorded to the officers all those powers which experience has proven necessary, with a wide latitude of discretion; including the power to take and preserve, and send to police officers elsewhere, in good faith, photographs and physical measurements of prisoners, in order to prevent escape and to facilitate recapture, reformation, and the investigation of past records required by statute, and as an aid in enforcing the habitual criminal law.</p> <p>Injunction — Relief—Past Injury. It not being the function of an injunction to correct past injuries, injunction does not lie to compel the destruction of photographs taken of a convict, in the absence of an allegation that the defendant is now threatening to make wrongful use of the same.</p> <p>Reformatories — Regulation — Identification — Rights of Prisoners. When the board of directors of the state reformatory had the power to take and preserve photographs and measurements of prisoners, the taking of the same by their superintendent in charge invades no legal right, although the managers had made no rules or regulations authorizing the same.</p> <p>Mandamus — When Lies — Right. Mandamus only issues against an officer in his official capacity to compel the performance of a duty imposed by law pertaining to his office; hence does not lie to compel the destruction of photographs rightfully taken of prisoners of a reformatory, in the absence of any statute therefor.</p> <p>Constitutional Law- — Civil Rights — Righ