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
_Mr. James T. Brady_ submitted an argument on the same side. He said
that the true test of the correctness of the objection could be
ascertained thus: If a man were arrested anywhere on the high seas,
supposed to be amenable to the Act of 1790, and was brought into a port
of the United States, within a Judicial District of the United States,
could he not demand, under the Act of Congress, to be tried in that
District? Could the commander of the vessel supersede that Act of
Congress, and say he would take the prisoner into the port of New York,
or any other port? What answer would that be to a writ of _habeas
corpus_ sued out by either of these men confined on that ship, within
that Judicial District? If any such rule as that could prevail, the Act
of Congress would become perfectly nugatory and subservient to the will
of the individual who apprehended prisoners on the high seas. If he had
started on a cruise round the world, he could carry them with him, and,
after returning to the United States, could take them into every
District till he came to the one that suited him. Mr. Brady, therefore,
claimed that it was wholly immaterial what might have been the design
of Commodore Stringham; and that the question of jurisdiction was
determined by the physical fact, as to what was the first Judicial
District into which these men were brought after being apprehended on
the high seas.
_Mr. Evarts_ considered that this was a question rather of regularity
of discussion, than a question to be now absolutely determined by the
Court. He supposed that they were entitled to lay before the Court all
the attendant facts governing the question of, whether the introduction
of these criminals from the point of seizure on the high seas was,
within the legal sense, made into the District of New York, or into
that of Virginia--whether the physical introduction of prisoners, in
the course of a voyage toward the port of New York, into the roads at
Hampton, is, within the meaning of the law, a bringing them into the
District of Virginia. If the substantial qualification of the course of
the voyage from the point of seizure to the place of actual debarcation
was to affect the act, this was the time for the prosecution to produce
that piece of evidence; and he supposed that that important inquiry
should be reserved till the termination of the case, when the proof
would be all before the Court. He suggested that no large ship could
enter the port of New York without physically passing through what
might be called the District of New Jersey; and argued that, in no
sense of the act, and in no just sense, should these prisoners be tried
in New Jersey, because the ship carrying them had passed through her
waters.
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