Trial of the Officers and Crew of the Privateer Savannah, on the Charge of Piracy, in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New YorkWarburton, A. F. (Adolphus Frederick)
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Trial of the Officers and Crew of the Privateer Savannah, on the Charge of Piracy, in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York
Warburton, A. F. (Adolphus Frederick)
Piracy -- United States; Privateering -- United States; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865
I shall first ask your honors' attention to the question of
jurisdiction, which, of course, separates itself from all the features
and circumstances of the particular crime. Your honors will notice that
this question of jurisdiction does not, in the least, connect itself
with the subject or circumstances of the crime, as going to make up its
completeness, under the general principles which give the _locality_ of
the crime as the _locality_ of the trial. With these principles,
whether of right and justice, or of convenience for the adequate and
complete ascertainment of the facts of an alleged crime, we have no
concern here. The crime complained of is one which has no locality
within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, and assigns
for itself, in its own circumstances, no place of trial. From the fact
that the crime was completed on the high seas, equally remote, perhaps,
from any District the Courts of which might have cognizance of the
transaction, there are no indications whatever, in its own
circumstances, pointing out the jurisdiction for its trial. It is,
therefore, wholly with the Government, finding a crime which gives, of
itself, no indication of where, on any principle, it should be tried,
to determine which of all the Districts of the United States in which
its Courts of Judicature are open,--all having an equal judicial
authority, and all being equally suitable in the arrangement of the
judicial establishment of the Union,--it is entirely competent, I say,
for the Government to determine, on reasons of its own convenience,
which District, out of the many, shall gain the jurisdiction, and upon
what circumstances the completeness of that jurisdiction shall depend.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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