—prisoner whose plea is induced by fear of a lynch mob entitled to withdraw his plea and have a trial

Several generations before the US Supreme Court held that states were required to provide an avenue for such claims, Indiana resurrected the ancient common law writ of coram nobis as a vehicle by which to provide relief to defendants whose rights had been violated.

"That courts possess inherent powers not derived from any statute is undeniably true. Among these powers are the right to correct their records so as to make them speak the truth, to pass upon the constitutionality of statutes, to prevent the abuse of their authority or process, and to enforce obedience to their mandates. If it were granted that courts possess only such …

—when defendant pleaded guilty to a crime of murder because of a threatening mob, conviction was set aside upon writ of error coram nobis

Even after these proceedings conclude, Indiana has long taken the further step of providing a procedure to attack convictions.

—at page 330, `We cannot conceive it possible—possible, we mean, in a legal sense, and under legal principles—that a court, with knowledge that a plea of guilty is forced from a prisoner by fear of death, would imprison him for life without a hearing or trial.

The Skok court, and those that it cited, viewed the voluntariness of a plea as a fact, the absence of which would preclude acceptance of the plea. Id.

Hopkins's statement of the rule follows immediately upon and within the same paragraph as his discussion of Sanders v. State

—a defendant pleaded guilty on the advice of a competent attorney who feared with good reason that a mob would lynch him if he stood trial.

Although the writ was still available for correcting factual errors that lie out-side the record—in both federal and state courts as well as both civil and criminal matters—many courts imported new grounds from equity