stating issues related to subject matter jurisdiction can be raised at anytime, can be raised for the first time on appeal, and can be raised sua sponte by the Court
How later courts described this case
- stating issues related to subject matter jurisdiction can be raised at anytime, can be raised for the first time on appeal, and can be raised sua sponte by the Court
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
CONNOR, J., dissents in a separate opinion.
CONNOR, J.:
(Dissenting).
Because I believe this Court is without subject matter jurisdiction over Brown’s appeal, I respectfully dissent. I would not have reached the issue of whether county-to-county transfers of magistrate court cases are legally permissible.
A magistrate’s court jury found Brown guilty on July 16, 1997. The magistrate did not receive Brown’s notice of appeal until August 6, 1997. It was necessary for Brown to serve notice of appeal upon the magistrate who tried the case within ten days of the verdict. S.C.Code Ann. § 18-3-30 (1985). This time limitation would have been extended to thirty days if Brown moved for a new trial. S.C.Code Ann. § 22-3-1000 (Supp.2001).
The record on appeal affirmatively demonstrates Brown did not make a motion for a new trial. The record does not include a written motion and the magistrate’s answer to Brown’s appeal stated the “Court never received such motion from the Defendant.” 1 Nevertheless, during oral argument, we granted Brown ten days to provide us with a copy of Brown’s new trial motion. 2 Brown instead supplied us with affidavits attesting he made an oral new trial motion immediately following the jury verdict.
*534 An appeal from magistrate’s court must be heard “upon the grounds of exceptions made and upon the papers required under this chapter, without the examination of witnesses .... ” S.C.Code Ann. § 18-3-70 (Supp.2001). The appeal is not de novo. The appellate court is limited in its review to the “papers” filed with the clerk of court by the magistrate, exclusively “the record, a statement of all the proceedings in the case and the testimony taken at the trial .... ” S.C.Code Ann. § 18-3-40 (Supp.2001).
We allowed Brown to submit a copy of any motion he made for a new trial. Therefore, we asked for something which should have been included in the record transmitted from the magistrate to the circuit court. The affidavits considered by the majority did not form any part of the record and therefore cannot now be made part of the record for our review. Post-verdict “affidavits constituted no part of the proceedings upon which the appeal was to be heard” and should not now be considered by this Court. State v. Richardson, 98 S.C. 147 , 82 S.E. 353 (1914); see also State v. Funderburk, 130 S.C. 352 , 126 S.E. 140 (1925) (stating the appellate court had no right to consider statements extraneous to the magistrate’s record).
. I interpret this statement from the magistrate as meaning she received neither a written nor an oral new trial motion from Brown.
. Contrary to the majority’s assertion, we did not request affidavits attesting to the new trial motion; we specifically offered to “delay any *534 further action on this until you've had an opportunity to further supplement the record and provide us with a copy of the motion for a new trial” and gave Brown "another ten days within which to provide this Court with a copy of the motion for a new trial that he filed.”