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
Well, with reference to offences committed at sea, the officers
capturing a prize have a right to bring it into any port, it is true,
and the port where the prisoners are brought is, as we claim under the
construction of the statute, the port where the trial is to take place;
the port where the prisoners are first brought, whether they are landed
or not. On that question of jurisdiction the rule is this: The
jurisdiction of the State extends to the distance of a marine league
from shore; and if these prisoners were brought on this vessel within
the distance of three miles from the shores of Virginia, where the
vessel anchored, as in port, having communication with the land, the
jurisdiction of the Circuit Court of the Eastern District of Virginia
attached, and they could not, after that, be put on trial for that
offence elsewhere. It is not necessary for me now to trouble the Jury
with re-reading authorities which were read upon this subject
yesterday. In a case which occurred some years ago, before Judge Story,
the learned Judge had fallen into a misapprehension on a question which
did not necessarily arise, because the facts to give rise to it did not
occur in the case. An offence had been committed--an attempt to create
a revolt on board of a vessel at sea. Those who had made the attempt
had either repented of the design, or had not succeeded in it; at all
events, they had afterwards gone on to do their duty on the vessel, and
had not been incarcerated on board the vessel at all. The vessel first
got into a port in Connecticut, and finally got into a port in
Massachusetts, and there, for the first time, those prisoners were
arrested and put into confinement. Undoubtedly the Court in
Massachusetts had jurisdiction in that case; but Judge Story, speaking
on a question which did not arise, appeared to treat the language of
the statute as being alternative, giving the Government the right to
select one of two places for the trial. That was corrected in a late
case which came before the Court in Massachusetts, in the same District
where Judge Story had decided the previous case. Both Judge Sprague, of
the District Court, and Judge Clifford, of the Circuit Court, held that
in a case where prisoners had been captured as malefactors on the high
seas, and had been confined on board a United States vessel, where the
vessel had gone into Key West for a temporary purpose, to get water,
without the prisoners ever having been landed, and where they went from
thence to Massachusetts, where the prisoners were arrested by the civil
authorities and imprisoned, that the Court of Massachusetts had no
jurisdiction whatever. Under the instructions of the Court, the Grand
Jury refused to find an indictment, and a warrant of removal was
granted to remove the prisoners for trial in the Court at Key
West,--the Court of Massachusetts holding that that was the only place
where they could be tried for the offence, because the vessel having
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