III.   Instruction

A Writ of Error Coram Nobis, also known as De Coram Nobis, is a form of peremptory precept and ecclesiastical indulgence issued under proper Sovereign Authority of a Juridic Person ordering an inferior court, or forum, or tribunal or public authority to correct its records when a superior forum and competent authority has received and reviewed the same records and established evidence of errors and failure of due process.

Error is a Latin word meaning “mistake, uncertainty, deception or delusion":

(i) Under Roman and Western Law, courts, tribunals and public authorities are required to follow certain judicial and administrative procedures consistent with any governing statutes. However, increasingly in the past one hundred years, lower courts, tribunals and administrative authorities have ignored fundamental steps in judicial and administrative procedures and increasingly failed to adjudicate according to the very statutes by which a controversy has been brought and concluded. In particular, there are many infamous cases of the prosecutors and their investigators perverting the course of justice by withholding or tampering with evidence or witness statements. While this may constitute itself a criminal offence, such action may constitute a fundamental error of fact, which if known would in probability have altered the outcome of a matter; and

(ii) In contrast, clerical administrative failures during a prosecution have not of their own been considered sufficient evidence alone to grant a Writ of Error; and

(iii) Given its gravity, a Writ of Error is normally only ever granted when clear and unmistakable evidence existed of fundamental error of fact exists, such as the existence or withholding of vital facts that would materially have affected with outcome of a controversy if previously known; and

(iv) In such cases of fundamental error in the application of justice, a Writ of Error or Coram Nobis affords a person the ultimate opportunity to appeal to the monarch or proper authority for justice – hence the very name of the writ “in the presence of the sovereign; before the king” ; and

(v) While a Writ of Error historically has been granted for reviewing matters of fundamental errors of fact, it has not been granted nor used for correcting inconsistency, unfairness or inadequate information of the lower courts. This is the preserve and purpose of a Writ of Certiorari; and

(vi) Similarly, the Writ of Error has historically ignored any questions of jurisdiction as a matter to be raised earlier in any proceedings through the Writ of Quo Warranto.