Coram nobis

The writ of coram nobis, Latin for before us, permits a court to correct its own judgment after discovering a fundamental error that did not appear in the original record and that would have prevented the judgment had it been known at trial. The remedy emerged in English common law during the thirteenth century to address errors that the ordinary writ of error could not reach, allowing the same court that issued the original judgment to correct its own factual mistakes without transferring the case elsewhere. England abolished the writ during the nineteenth century, replacing it with appellate procedure, through the Common Law Procedure Act of 1852 for civil cases and the Criminal Appeal Act of 1907 for criminal cases. The writ survives in the United States, available in federal courts, sixteen state courts, and the District of Columbia; the 1954 Supreme Court decision in United States v. Morgan established that federal courts may issue coram nobis to former prisoners who present new evidence of actual innocence, and it remains today an extraordinary remedy available only in compelling circumstances. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/