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)
History
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
It is not at all a right of the defendant to claim a trial before a
particular tribunal, nor are there any considerations which should
prevent the selection of the place of jurisdiction through whatever
casual agency may be employed in that selection. In the eye of the law,
the Judges are alike, and the Districts are alike. Congress,
considering the matter thus wholly open, in order that there might be
no contest open for all the Districts, and assuming that there would be
some natural circumstance likely to attend the bringing of the offender
within the reach of civil process, when a crime had been committed
outside of the civil process of every nation, determined, by the 14th
section of the Crimes Act of March 3d, 1825, which gives the law of
jurisdiction in this case, that the trial should be "had in the
District where the offender is apprehended, or into which he may be
first brought." Nor is it a true construction of this statute to say
that the law intends that the cognizance of the crime--all of the
Districts being equally competent to try it, and there being nothing in
the crime itself assigning its locality as the place of trial--shall
belong exclusively to that Court which shall first happen to get
jurisdiction by the actual bringing of the offender within its
operation. If that be true, it is apparent that neither one of the
Districts thus differently described has jurisdiction exclusively of
the other. Now, the language of the statute certainly gives this double
place of trial in the alternative; and it is very difficult to say what
principle either of right, of convenience, or of judicial regularity,
is offended by such a construction and application of the statute.
Accordingly, I understand it to have been held by Mr. Justice Story, in
the case of _The United States_ vs. _Thompson_ (1 _Sumner_, 168), that
there were these alternative places of trial; and, as a matter of
reasoning, he finds that such arrangement is suitable to the general
principles of jurisprudence, and to the general purposes of the
statute. Now, if this be so, then, as we come, in this District, within
one of the alternatives of the statute, and as this District is
confessedly the one in which the apprehension of the offenders took
place, we are clear of any difficulty about jurisdiction.
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