Coram nobis

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In law, a motion Coram Nobis (from the Latin "in our presence", usually translated in context as "the error before us") is a petition to the court in its capacity of a Court of Equity to correct a previous error "of the most fundamental character" to "achieve justice" where "no other remedy" is available. A Coram Nobis petition applies to persons who have already been convicted and have served their sentence. It may seek to remove probation requirements or restrictions, eliminate payment or obtain refund of court imposed fines, restore voting rights and gun ownership, improve employment and credit potential, remove a public stigma, and so forth, in order to restore so far as possible the erroneously convicted party to a pre-conviction state. Motions may be filed by heirs at law even after the original person is deceased.

Such motions cannot be used to address issues of law previously ruled upon by the court but only to address errors of fact that were not known at time of trial or were knowingly withheld during and after trial from judges and defendants by prosecutors, and which might have altered the verdict were they presented at the trial.

One relatively well known example was in regard to the Supreme Court case Korematsu v. United States (1944), which upheld a conviction pertaining to the World War II Japanese American internment. In 1984, a federal district court judge granted a writ of Coram Nobis, overturning the conviction. See Korematsu v. United States, 584 F. Supp. 1406, 1984 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17410.

Another example of the use of Coram Nobis is in the Alger Hiss case. In 1982, a petition by Hiss for a writ of coram nobis was denied. See In re Hiss, 542 F. Supp. 973, 1982 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13963.