Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 11.pdf/385

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The Green Bag.

all the purposes of the law, a resident of that State. The Simpson case in Georgia greatly re sembles a case in Tennessee. A ball fired across the State line from North Carolina took effect upon a man in Tennessee, causing death. Because of this muddled and divided jurisdiction the courts of North Carolina held that a conviction for murder in that State could not be sustained. A curious se quel followed this decision through an at tempt by extradition proceedings to take the accused to Tennessee. The attempt failed, the courts holding, as did Judge Cook in the Botkin case that the defendant never having been in Tennessee, could not be a fugitive from that State. The trial of Guiteau for the assassination of President Garfield was the occasion of a debate as to jurisdiction of the murderer. It will be recalled that Guiteau shot his vic tim in Washington, and that thereafter the martyred president was removed to New Jersey, where he died three months later. Counsel for Guiteau urged at his trial in Washington that the crime had not been completed in the District of Columbia and that the court was without jurisdiction. The judges overruled this contention, finding from the authorities that where a felonious blow is struck in one county and death re sults in another the murder is complete in the county where the blow was struck. A number of interesting cases appear in old Federal court reports. In 1806 it was held that a statute giving the United States courts jurisdiction of murders committed on the high seas, conferred no jurisdiction where a wound was inflicted on the high seas and death resulted after land was reached. In a similar case it was held that there could be no unlawful killing on the high seas where death resulted on land. Still more strange was the application of the law in a case where a mortal blow was inflicted in Alexandria, Va., and death followed in Maryland. It was held that the court at

Alexandria had no jurisdiction of the offense as a homicide, but only as an assault and battery, the murder not being complete in the first-named place. The courts of England wrestled with a complicated question of this kind in 1784. A smuggler named George Coombes, stand ing on the shore, fired at and killed the master of the sloop Orestes, who was row ing toward the shore for the purpose of seizing a smuggling lugger from which Coombes had disembarked. The question was as to whether Coombes should be tried by the admiralty courts, thus fixing the crime as having been committed on the boat where the shot took effect or by the courts of common law, which had jurisdiction of the place where Coombes was stand ing. This knotty problem called forth an argument before "all the judges of England in the exchequer chamber." The decision rendered by this array of judges was that the admiralty courts had jurisdiction, the crime being considered as committed where the shot took effect. The United States courts some years later dealt with a case of similar character. The defendant, a man named Davis, was master of an American whaling schooner. While his vessel was lying at anchor in a harbor of one of the South Sea Islands he took up his gun for the purpose of shooting or intimidating a member of his own crew. While so holding the weapon it was dis charged, either intentionally or by accident, and the ball hit and killed a man on a neighboring schooner belonging to the in habitants of the Society Islands. The United States courts held, in line with the English decision quoted, that the crime was not committed on the American whaler but on the Society Island schooner. It was an act, therefore, done under the territorial government of the king of the Society Is lands and not within the admiralty jurisdiction of the American courts. On the trial in America it developed that Captain Davis