Case ID: scl_15/html/0233-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Johnson, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Ex parte Gilchrist.
    The Court of Common Pleas have no power under a writ of Ha-beas Corpus to discharge a person in custody, under a writ oi. ne exeat issued from the Court of Equity.
    This was an application to one of the Judges of the court of Common Pleas, for the discharge of the prisoner under a writ of habeas corpus. It appeared by the return of the Sheriff, that the petitioner was detained in his custody under a writ of ne exeat, issued by the commissioner in Equity for Chester district. The plaintiff’s counsel contended that the bill filed, upon which the Commissioner had issued the writ, did not make out a ease in which the Court of Equity had the power to order a writ of ne exeat.
    Huger, J. who heard the application, refused to look into the bill or to grant a discharge.
    
      A. W. Thomson, for the petitioner,
    now made the point before this court.
    Chesney, same side,
    contended that the prisoner was entitled to be heard ex debito justicise. It is in nature of error, to ascertain the legality of a commitment. Blac. Com. 134,376, 129. His honor said that the matter was to be judged of by the return of the Sheriff, and that he would not investigate the matter of it. The only possible method to ascertain the legality of a commitment is to examine into the facts of the ■ ease. Unless the party is heard, there is no benefit in the Act to him. Was there any authority to shew that the court of common pleas cannot hear a habeas corpus, because the prisoner has been committed by the court of Chancery ? He cited Addis’ case, Cro. Jac. 219. Yeates vs. Lansing, 4 John. Rep. 417. Vent. 357. Vaugh. 153. Salk. 350.
   Curia, per

Johnson, J.

The act of 1808, 1 Brev. Dig- 212, tit. Court of Equity, sec. 76, invests the commissioner in equity with the power of the Chancellor in relation to granting orders for the writ of ne exeat in all cases of practice ; and the petitioner claims to be discharged from an imprisonment to which he is subjected by a process sued out in pursuance of this authority, on a writ of habeas corpus issued by a judge of the superior courts of law. In the organization of the judicial department of the government, certain powers were assigned to the different tribunals, corresponding with the nature and extent of the jurisdiction confided to them; and in the exercise of these powers, except so far as the right of appeal is given, the most subordinate are as absolute and authorative as the tribunals in the last resort. The judgment of a Justice of the Peace in a small and mean cause is as binding on the citizen as the judgment of this court; and I should deprecate even more than the repeal of the habeas corpus act, that state of things in which tribunals without the forms of law would be permitted to review and controul the judgment of each other ad libitum. The habeas corpus act certainly confers no such power. Its object was to secure the citizen from illegal and arbitrary imprisonment; and the wildest speculations have never yet carried it so far as to subvert all law and order. For even in the case of Yates vs. Lansing, 4 John. R. 317. 5 Do. 282. 6 Do. 337, than which perhaps no case was ever more warmly contested, the bone of contention was whether the Chancellor had jurisdiction over the subject matter for which he caused the plaintiff tobe attached.

In this case the law. confided to the commissioner the power of granting the writ of ne exeat. The petitioner is' therefore confined and imprisoned according to the strict forms of law; and the presiding judge had no more power to discharge him than the commissioner would have had to discharge a culprit committed for execution by a court of sessions.'

Motion refused.