Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

VREDENBURGH, J. *

The defendant,

Case reserved. we must assume, was a citizen of the state of New York. Nothing was done by the defendant in this state. When the blow was given, both parties were out of its jurisdiction, and within the jurisdiction of the state of New York. The only fact connected with the offense, alleged to have taken place within our jurisdiction, is that after the injury, the deceased came into, and died in this state. This is not the case where a man stands on the New York side of the line, and shooting across the border, kills one in New Jersey. When that is so, the blow is in fact struck in New Jersey. It is the defendant's act in this state. The passage of the ball, after it crosses the boundary, and its actual striking, is the continuous act of the defendant. In all cases the criminal act is the impinging of the weapon, whatever it may be, on the person of the party injured, and that must necessarily be where the impingement happens. And whether the sword, the ball, or any other missile, passes over a boundary in the act of striking, is a matter of no consequence.

*

*

If the defendant is liable here at all, it must be solely because the deceased came and died here after he was injured. Can that, in the nature of things, make the defendant guilty of murder or manslaughter here? If it can, then for a year after an injury is inflicted, murder, as to its jurisdiction, is ambulatory at the option of the party injured, and becomes punishable, as such, whereever he may see fit to die. It may be manslaughter, in its various degrees, in one place, murder, in its various degrees, in another. Its punishment may be fine in one country, imprisonment, whipping, beheading, strangling, quartering, hanging, or torture in another, and all for no act done by the defendant in any of these jurisdictions, but only because the party injured found it convenient to travel. This is not like the case of stolen goods, carried from one state to another, or of leaving the state for any purpose whatever. We may exercise acts of sovereignty over the wastes of ocean or of land, but we must necessarily stop at the boundary of another. The allegation of an act done in another sovereignty, to be a violation of our own, is simply alleging an impossibility, and all laws to punish such acts are necessarily void. It is said that if we do not take jurisdiction, the defendant will go unpunished, inasmuch as the party injured, not dying in New York, he could not be guilty of murder there. But New York may provide by law for such cases, and if she does not, it is their fault, and not ours. *Lower court advised that no crime is charged. S. v. Carter, 27 N. J. L. (3 Dutch.) 499, B. 407, Kn. 365, Mi. 585.

*

蓉 *

(Mich. Sup. Ct., 1860.) Constitutionality of Statute. Tyler injured Jones while both were aboard an American boat near the Canadian shore of the St. Clair river, of which boat Jones was master, and which Tyler, as deputy U. S. marshal, was attempting

to attach on a writ from the U. S. D. C. for district of Mich.; and of the wounds so received Jones afterwards died in Michigan. Tyler being found within the state, was indicted for murder, and convicted. On error to the supreme court, he contended that no offense was committed in Michigan, and that the statute making such death from such act criminal was unconstitutional. MANNING, J.

We think it clearly within the scope of the legislative power. The expediency or policy of the statute has nothing to do with its constitutionality, and if it was a legitimate subject of inquiry and consideration in determining the constitutional question, we should not hesitate in the present instance to declare in its favor; for the crime, though commenced in Canada, was consummated in Michigan. The shooting itself, and the wound which was its immediate consequence, did not constitute the offense of which the prisoner is convicted. Had death not ensued, he would have been guilty of an assault and battery, not murder; and would have been criminally accountable to the laws of Canada only. But the consequences of the shooting were not confined to Canada. They followed Jones into Michigan, where they continued to operate until the crime was consummated in his death. If such a killing did not by the common law constitute murder in Michigan, we think it the clear intent of the statute to make it such, to the same extent as if the wounding and the death had both occurred in the state. Martin, C. J., and Christiancy, J., concurred. Campbell, J., dissented on the ground that no part of the criminal act of the defendant was done at the place of the death. Affirmed. Tyler v. P., 8 Mich. 320.

(Mass. Sup. Judicial Ct., 1869.) Death on Land from Injuries at Sea. Indictment against C. H. Macloon, F. Macloon, and Nic. Kearney, for manslaughter. Kearney and C. H. Macloon were convicted, and have excepted. GRAY, J. The defendants, the one a citizen of Maine, and the other a British subject, have been convicted in the superior court in Suffolk of manslaughter of a man who died within the county in consequence of injuries inflicted by them upon him in a British merchant ship on the high seas. The principal question in the case is that of jurisdiction, which touches the sovereign power of the commonwealth to bring to justice the murderers of those who die within its borders. This question has been ably and thoroughly argued, and has received the consideration which its importance demands. The statute on which the defendants were indicted, after prescribing the punishment for murder and manslaughter, provides that "if a mortal wound is given, or other violence or injury inflicted, or poison is administered, on the high seas, or on land either within or without the limits of this state, by means whereof death ensues in any county thereof, such offense may be prosecuted and punished in the county where the death happens Gen. Sts., c. 171, § 19. This statute is founded upon the

[ocr errors]

*

general power of the legislature, except so far as restrained by the constitutions of the commonwealth and of the United States, to declare any wilful or negligent act which causes an injury to person or property within its territory to be a crime, and to provide for the punishment of the offender upon being apprehended within its jurisdiction. The general principle, that a man who does a criminal act in one county or state may be held liable for its continuous operation in another, has been affirmed in various other cases. The crime not being murder or manslaughter before the death, an indictment alleging the stroke at one day and place, and the death at another day and place, is good if it alleges the murder or manslaughter to have been at the time and place of the death, but bad if it alleges that the defendant killed and murdered the deceased at the day and place at which the stroke was given, "for," in the words of Lord Coke, "though to some purpose the death hath relation to the blow, yet this relation, being a fiction in law, maketh not the felony to be then committed." 2 Inst. 318, 1 Hale P. C. 427, 2 Hale P. C. 188. The legislature of the commonwealth, from an earlier period, has asserted the right of punishing such crimes in the county where they take final effect by destroying life. At February term, 1795, of this court in Suffolk, a conviction of manslaughter at common law was had upon an indictment charging that Joseph Hood on the high seas mortally injured John Antony, by assaulting and beating him with a rope and a stave and his hands and feet, and exposing him, without sufficient covering, to the cold, winds, and storms, and depriving him of necessary food, of all which injuries he languished on the high seas and at Boston in said county, and died at Boston. At August term, 1795, judgment was arrested, upon the ground that the indictment charged that the cause of death arose on the high seas and not within the jurisdiction of this court. Hood's Case, Rec. 1795, fol. 216, and papers on file. It was to cure the defect thus declared to exist in our law, that the legislature at its next gession, on Feb. 15, 1796, passed the St. of 1795, c. 45, § 2. * The most plausible form of the argument against the jurisdiction. is, that the coming into the state is the act, not of the wrong-doer, but of the injured person, and therefore should not subject the former to the jurisdiction, merely because the latter happens to die there. But it is the nature and the right of every man to move about at his pleasure, except so far as restrained by law; and whoever gives him a mortal blow assumes the risk of this, and in view of the law, as in that of morals, takes his life wherever he happens to die of that wound; and may be there punished if the laws of the country have been so framed as to cover such a case. Neither of the statutes of the commonwealth upon this subject has ever contained any words limiting the description of the persons by whom the offense might be committed, and the existing statute clearly manifests the intention of the legislature to punish all who

#

*

[ocr errors]

without legal justification cause the death of any person within the commonwealth, wherever the first wrongful act is done, or of whatever country the wrong-doer is a citizen. The power of the commonwealth to punish the causing of death within its jurisdiction is wholly independent of the power of the United States, or of the nation to which the vessel belongs, to punish the inflicting of the injury on the high seas. And upon full consideration the court is unanimously of opinion that there is nothing in the constitution or laws of the United States, the law of nations, or the constitution of the commonwealth to restrain the legislature from enacting such a statute. Exceptions overruled. C. v. Macloon, 101 Mass. 1, 100 Am. Dec. 89, B. 409, F. 336.

[ocr errors]

(Md. Ct. of App., 1892.) Death in Another State from Wound Given Here. Indictment for murder. Demurrer overruled and defendant brings error. ALVEY, C. J. # * The death occurring in Philadelphia as the result of the mortal wound inflicted in Maryland, the question presented on demurrer to the third and fourth counts of the indictment is one in regard to which some doubts, it would appear, were entertained in the early days of the English common law. These doubts seem to have had their foundation in certain maxims and practice that originally obtained in respect to the venue for the trial of facts, the reason for which has long since ceased to exist; it being supposed, in the early periods of the English law, that it was necessary that the jury should come from the vicinage where the matters of fact occurred, and therefore be better qualified to investigate and discover the truth of the transaction than persons living at a distance from the scene could be. Hence the venue was always regarded as a matter of substance; and where, at the common law, the commission of an offense was commenced in one county and consummated in another, the venue could be laid in neither, and the offender went altogether unpunished. And even in the case of murder, if the mortal wound was inflicted or poison administered, in one county, and the party died in consequence of the wound or poison in another, it was doubted by some whether the murderer could be punished in either county; for it was supposed that a jury of the first could not take cognizance of the death in the second, and a jury of the second could not inquire of the wounding or poisoning in the first; and so the felon would escape punishment altogether. 1 Chit. Cr. Law 177. This doubt was founded in a mere technicality, and savored so much of a senseless nicety, that it was deemed a reproach to the law; and to remove all doubt, and to fix a certain venue for the trial of the crime, St. 2 & 3 Edw. 6, was passed. By $ 278 of Art. 27 of the Code, codified from § 17 of the Act of 1809, c. 138, it is provided that "if any person be feloniously stricken or poisoned in one county, and die of the same stroke or poison in another county, within one year thereafter, the offender shall be tried

* * *

in the court within whose jurisdiction such county lies where the stroke or poison was given; and in like manner, an accessory to murder or felony committed, shall be triel by the court within whose jurisdiction such person became accessory. This statute, as will be observed, conforms neither to St. 2 & 3 Edw. 6, nor to that of 2 G. 2; but it is, as we think is manifest, simply in confirmation or declaratory of the common law. This, we think, is made clear upon examination of text writers of high authority, and by judicial decisions of courts entitled to great weight in the determination of such a question. And if this provision of our code be simply declaratory of the common law, as we suppose it to be, the same reason and principle equally apply to the case where the mortal blow or poison is given in any county in this state, and the party so stricken or poisoned shall, in consequence of the blow or poison, die out of the state, within the year and a day after the blow given or poison administered, as to the case provided for by the terms of the statute. In such case it is the law of Maryland that is violated, and not the law of the state where death may happen to occur. By the felonious act of the accused, not only is there a great personal wrong inflicted upon the party assaulted or mortally wounded, while under the protection of the law of the state, but the peace and dignity of the state where the act is perpetrated is outraged; and though death may not immediately follow, yet if it does follow as a consequence of the felonious act within the year, the crime of murder is complete. In inflicting the mortal wound then and there, the accused expends his active agency in producing the crime, no matter where the injured party may languish, or where he may die, if death ensues within the time, and as a consequence of the stroke or poison given. The grade and characteristics of the crime are determined immediately that death ensues, and that result relates back to the original felonious wounding or poisoning. The giving the blow that caused the death constitutes the crime. Affirmed. Stout v. S., 76 Md. 317, 25 Atl. 299, Kn. 386.

Acc. S. v. Gessert (1875), 21 Minn. 369, B. 403.

EXTRADITION AND RENDITION.

§ 90. Foreign extradition depends on the treaties with the several nations; interstate rendition depends on the United States constitution and the acts of Congress.

(U. S. Sup. Ct., 1860.) "A Person Charged"-Duty and Rights of State Applied To. Motion for mandamus in behalf of Kentucky to compel the governor of Ohio to surrender Lago as a fugitive from prosecution for seducing and enticing away a slave and aiding her in attempting to escape. The governor of Ohio had refused.

« ForrigeFortsett »