Case ID: dc_2/html/0109-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "The Court", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

United States v. Christopher Minifie.
    A colored person who has been “ made free in virtue of” the Act of Maryland, 1796, c. 67, is not a competent witness against a white person.
    Indictment, for larceny, against a white man.
    
      Mr. Jones, for the United States,
    offered, as a witness, a black man who had obtained his freedom by being removed from Virginia to Maryland, contrary to the Maryland law of 1796, c. 67.
    
      Mr. Key, for the defendant,
    objected; and relied upon the 5th section of that statute, which declares that no slave “ who shall be manumitted or made free by virtue of that act,” “ shall be entitled ” “ to give evidence against any white person.”
    
      
       Ckakch, C. J., not having the statute then béfore him, supposed it referred only to voluntary manumission.
    
   The Court

(Cranch, C. J., contra,)

rejected the witness.

Note. The Honorable Nicholas Fitzhugh, one of the judges of this court, highly respected as a judge, and beloved as a man, died at his house in Alexandria, on Saturday, the 31st of December, 1814, of a typhus fever. He was succeeded by the Honorable James Sewall Morsell, whose commission is dated January 11th, 1815, and who took'his seat on the bench, at Washington, on Monday, the 16th.

There were no cases at April term, 1815, worth reporting.