Mandatory pronouncement and contemporaneous signing of criminal judgments required; convictions cannot stand when these formalities are ignored.

In criminal trials, a judgment must be pronounced in open court and signed and dated contemporaneously; these requirements are mandatory, and non-compliance is an illegality, not a mere procedural irregularity. Where conviction and sentence are recorded before a duly delivered judgment, the proceedings are fundamentally defective and cannot sustain the resulting conviction. The convictions and sentences were set aside.

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Issues: Whether convictions and sentences could be sustained when the judgments were neither written nor pronounced nor signed and dated in open court, and sentence was recorded before judgment.

Analysis: The judgment held that compliance with the requirements of pronouncing the judgment in open court and signing and dating it contemporaneously is mandatory in criminal trials. Failure to follow these formalities is not a mere irregularity but an illegality. Since the accused were convicted and sentenced without such judgments being duly delivered, the proceedings were fundamentally defective and the convictions could not stand.

Conclusion: The convictions and sentences were set aside.

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