State v. Pittman

The opinion of the court was delivered by

Fontron, J.:

The defendant, Leo Arthur Pittman, was convicted of three crimes: first degree kidnapping, statutory rape and sodomy. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on the kidnapping charge and to lesser terms on the other two. This appeal is from those sentences.

Two points, only, are raised on appeal:

1. That the defendant was denied the benefits of a preliminary hearing by reason of the examining magistrate’s failure to appoint a sanity commission prior to the preliminary hearing to ascertain whether the defendant was sane and able to understand…