Case ID: mart-os_2/html/0279-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "By the Court.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

PAUL MACARTY's CASE.
    An order to arrest a person charged with an of-fence, and cary him directly to jail, is illegal.
    Habeas corpus. The gaoler produced, as the cause of his detention, a warrant from a parish judge, stating that ftom depositions before him, there was string suspucion that the prisoner was concerned in an insurrection of the slaves. com-rnmanding an officer to arrest him apd convey him to jail, and the gaoler to receive and keep him. till he was discharged in clue course of law. The depositions were sent for, and charged him with conversations, from which a turbulent temper of mind and a disposition to inimity against the whites, were manifest; and the expression of a hope that the Spanish flag would soon be raised in the state; and on hearsay with expressions directly tending to raise an insurrection.
    
      Gymes, for the prisoner.
    He was illegally committed. A party; between his arrest and commitment, is entitled to a hearing, and the opportunity of disproving the facts sworn to against him.
    There is no charge on oath of any crimea Words from which suspicion may arise, are imputed to him.
    Duncan, the attorney-general,
    informed the Court, he had lately sent to the grant jury a bill against the prisoner, and a number of witnesses were now before them respecting it.
   By the Court.

Although the prisoner. must be released from confinement on the present mittimus, as strong suspicion arises against him, we ought not to dismiss him without hearing the witnesses who are before. the grand jury: but as they are now under an examination before the proper tribunal, it is much more convenient that weshould await the determination of the grand jury, then to suspend or disturb it, by sending for the witnesses from the grand jury room. The prisoner must thereforebe committed for a farther inquiry, until the morning when, if the bill be found not a true bill, he will be discharged.

Prisoner remanded.