Definition
Vicecomes non misit breve (Latin: "the sheriff did not send the writ") is a formal entry made on the court record indicating that a writ directed to the sheriff was not returned or executed. When a writ issued commanding the sheriff to take some action — summoning jurors, producing a prisoner, or compelling a party's appearance — and the sheriff failed to return it, the clerk would enter this phrase as a notation of continuance on the record. The entry served as the official explanation for why proceedings could not advance on the scheduled date, carrying the matter forward to the next opportunity for trial.
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Common Confusion
Researchers should not confuse vicecomes non misit breve with non est inventus, a distinct sheriff's return indicating that the defendant could not be found for service of process. Non est inventus is an affirmative return by the sheriff — a report that service was attempted and failed. Vicecomes non misit breve, by contrast, reflects the sheriff's silence: no return at all was made. The distinction matters when reconstructing how a case stalled. Non est inventus tells you the sheriff tried and could not serve the party; vicecomes non misit breve tells you the writ never came back to the court in any form.
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Why It Matters in Research
This is a narrow procedural formula tied specifically to common law pleading practice before the emergence of modern civil procedure. Researchers encountering it will almost always be working with English common law records or early American court records predating code pleading reforms — predominantly pre-1850 materials, though it persists in some American jurisdictions into the latter half of the nineteenth century.
The phrase functions as a record artifact, not a substantive legal ruling. Its presence on a record does not mean a case was dismissed, delayed by the parties, or decided on the merits. It means only that the sheriff's failure to act caused a gap in the proceedings. Researchers reconstructing case timelines from historical dockets must recognize that vicecomes non misit breve explains a continuance traceable to the sheriff's office rather than to counsel, the parties, or the court's calendar.
The entry is most commonly found in the gap between issue joinder and trial. After parties joined issue, the court would direct process to the sheriff to empanel a jury or secure attendance of necessary persons. If the sheriff failed to act — whether through neglect, overload, or practical obstacles — the record would be held open with this notation rather than advancing to verdict. Multiple successive entries of this kind on a single case record signal chronic delay in execution of process, a common phenomenon in frontier American courts where sheriffs covered enormous territories.
Corpus researchers should note that this phrase may appear in abbreviated or anglicized form in American records. Clerks working quickly sometimes rendered it as "vic. non mis. brev." or simply noted "sheriff non misit" without the full Latin. Cross-referencing against entries for CONTINUANCE, PROCESS, and SHERIFF will help locate the procedural context in which this notation appears.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier and Burrill agree on the core meaning but approach it from slightly different angles. Bouvier's is definitional — identifying the phrase as a record entry made when the sheriff has done nothing by virtue of the directed writ. Burrill is more procedurally precise, situating it as a form of continuance that appears on the record specifically after issue and before trial, and citing two early eighteenth-century English reports (7 Modern 349 and 11 Modern 231) as authority for the usage.
Neither source elaborates on the consequences of repeated non-returns or on what remedies lay against a non-compliant sheriff, though such remedies existed in the form of amercement proceedings. Both dictionaries treat this as a settled, uncontroversial formula — a reflection of how thoroughly routinized the entry had become in common law practice by the time these dictionaries were compiled. Neither source addresses the phrase's disappearance under code pleading, which is the most important transition point for modern researchers.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Continuance; Common Law Pleading and Practice; The Office of Sheriff in Common Law Procedure
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