Definition
A mittimus is a written warrant or precept issued by a court or magistrate directing a jailer or other officer to receive and confine a named person in custody. It is the formal mechanism by which a court commits an individual to prison following conviction, upon remand, or when bail is unavailable or denied.
The term carries a secondary, distinct meaning in English legal practice: a writ used to transmit the record of a proceeding from one court to another, functionally similar to a certiorari in its role of transferring judicial records. In old English practice relating to counties palatine, it also served as the jury process commanding the proper officer of the palatine court to summon a jury and return the record.
1. Commitment warrant (primary modern meaning): The order issued after sentencing, or upon remand, directing a correctional facility to accept and detain the defendant. The mittimus names the individual, states the offense or ground for commitment, and specifies the term or conditions of confinement.
2. Record-transfer writ (historical English practice): A writ directing that a record or its tenor be sent from one court to another. Where a plea of nul tiel record was raised in one court against the record of another court of equal or superior jurisdiction, the tenor of the record was brought into chancery by certiorari and then transmitted onward by mittimus.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A warrant issued for someone to be taken into custody; a writ for moving records from one court to another; informally, a formal dismissal from a situation.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A precept or warrant granted by a justice for committing to prison a party charged with crime; also a writ for removing records from one court to another.
The common and legal definitions align more closely here than with many legal terms. The meaningful gap is in the third Wiktionary sense — "formal dismissal from a situation" — which has no recognized legal counterpart and should be disregarded in research contexts. The legal mittimus is a directed order to a specific custodian, not a general dismissal.
Common Confusion
Mittimus is occasionally conflated with a bench warrant or capias, but the distinction matters. A bench warrant or capias directs an officer to apprehend and bring a person before the court. A mittimus directs that a person already before or sentenced by the court be delivered to and confined in a specific custodial facility. The mittimus issues after the court has acted; the arrest warrant issues to compel the person's appearance. Similarly, mittimus should not be confused with a habeas corpus, which runs in the opposite direction — commanding that a confined person be brought before a court.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working with pre-twentieth century American and English criminal records will encounter mittimus most often in two contexts that require careful disambiguation: as a commitment warrant in criminal proceedings, and as a record-transfer writ in civil practice. These are functionally unrelated instruments that share a name. Conflating them when reading older court records or digests will produce errors.
In historical American practice, particularly in Louisiana (cited in Bouvier referencing early Louisiana reports), the mittimus appeared in the specific procedural context of counties palatine, carrying procedural obligations distinct from its use elsewhere. Researchers consulting Louisiana territorial-era records or palatine court records should note that the mittimus there commanded jury summoning and record return, not simple commitment.
The term appears with diminishing frequency in modern American practice. Many jurisdictions have replaced the mittimus with a standardized commitment order or judgment of conviction form, but the underlying function — formally directing the receiving institution to accept and hold the prisoner under specified terms — remains. Where the term survives in modern statutes or court rules, it retains the commitment warrant meaning exclusively; the record-transfer sense is functionally obsolete in American courts.
In criminal appellate research, the mittimus is the document that must be corrected or amended when a conviction is reversed or a sentence modified on appeal. An appellate court's order alone does not alter the mittimus; the trial court must issue a corrected mittimus to the custodial institution. Researchers tracing the history of a prisoner's sentence should always locate the mittimus and any subsequent amended mittimus, not rely solely on the judgment or appellate order.
Historical Dictionary Support
The five source dictionaries are in substantial agreement on both core meanings. Burrill's is the most precise on the commitment warrant sense, tracing it to Blackstone's Commentaries (4 Bl. Com. 300) and defining it as "a precept or warrant granted by a justice, for committing an offender to gaol, where bail is not allowed, or cannot be obtained." Black's (both editions) lead with the English record-transfer writ and move to the criminal commitment meaning, reflecting the English origins of the term. Anderson is characteristically compressed, giving only the Latin origin and cross-referencing the commitment warrant.
Bouvier provides the most historically situated treatment, grounding the record-transfer writ in the specific procedural world of English counties palatine and citing early Louisiana practice, which inherited elements of that system. Bouvier's entry is useful for researchers working with pre-statehood or territorial Louisiana records, where the mittimus carried procedural freight it did not carry elsewhere.
None of the historical sources adequately addresses the modern administrative role of the mittimus as the operative document linking a criminal judgment to the receiving correctional institution — a practical function that has grown more significant as correctional systems became bureaucratically complex.
Jurisdictional Note
American jurisdictions vary in whether they use the term mittimus or have replaced it with "commitment order" or "judgment and commitment." Illinois statutory law, for example, preserves the term mittimus explicitly in its criminal procedure code. In jurisdictions that have abandoned the label, the document's function is unchanged. Researchers should identify the controlling jurisdiction's terminology before assuming the mittimus is or is not in use.