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
The 9th section of the same act provides, that if any citizen shall
commit any piracy or robbery aforesaid, or any act of hostility against
the United States, or any citizen thereof, upon the high sea, under
color of any commission from any foreign prince or state, or on
pretence of authority from any person, such offender shall,
notwithstanding the pretence of any such authority, be deemed,
adjudged, and taken to be a pirate, felon, and robber, and, on being
thereof convicted, shall suffer death.
A statute, on this subject, enacted in 1819, expired by its own
limitation; but on the 15th of May, 1820, an act was passed making
further provisions for punishing the crime of piracy. This law is
printed in the third volume of the U.S. Statutes at Large, page 600.
The 3d section provides, that if any person shall, upon the high seas,
or in any open roadstead, or in any haven, basin, or bay, or in any
river where the sea ebbs and flows, commit the crime of robbery in or
upon any ship or vessel, or upon any of the ship's company of any ship
or vessel, or the lading thereof, such person shall be adjudged to be a
pirate; and, being thereof convicted before the Circuit Court of the
United States for the district into which he shall be brought, or in
which he shall be found, shall suffer death.
I now refer to the act of March 3d, 1825, to be found in the 4th volume
of the Statutes at Large, page 115. It is entitled, "An act more
effectually to provide for the punishment of certain crimes against the
United States, and for other purposes." I cite it simply on the
question of jurisdiction. The 14th section provides, that the trial of
all offences which shall be committed upon the high seas or elsewhere,
out of the limits of any State or district, shall be in the district
where the offender is apprehended, or into which he may be first
brought. The twenty-fifth section of this act repeals all acts, or
parts of acts, inconsistent therewith.
Under the act of 1790 a question of construction arose, in the Supreme
Court of the United States, as to whether robbery on the high seas was
punishable with death. It was settled (3 Wheaton, 610) that the statute
did punish robbery with death if committed on the high seas, even
though robbery on land might not incur that extreme penalty. I refer to
the United States _v._ Palmer, 3 Wheaton, 610; the United States _v._
Jones, 3 Washington's Circuit Court Reports, 209; United States _v._
Howard, Id., 340; 2 Whar. Crim. Law, fifth ed., p. 543.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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