Case ID: va_4/html/0182-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Per Curiam.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The Commonwealth v. John Moore.
    Presentments — Master Allowing Slave to Hire Out— Jurisdiction. — The Superior Courts of Law have not jurisdiction to try and determine a presentment against a master for suffering his slave to hire himself out, &c. ; but on presentment being made, it ought to be certified to a Magistrate to be by him acted on pursuant to the Statute.
    At the Superior Court of Daw for Dinwid-die, in September, 1818, the Grand Jury made the following presentment: “We of the Grand Jury do present John Moore, for suffering his negro man named Billy, to hire himself and go at large in Dinwiddie county, within the six months *last past.” At the succeeding Court, the Defendant objected to the jurisdiction of that Court, and moved that the presentment be certified to a Magistrate, to be acted on according to Daw; whereupon that Court adjourned to this Court the following questions : 1. Whether this Court hath jurisdiction of ,the offence charged in the presentment ? 2. W’hether the said presentment should be certified to a Magistrate ? and, 3. What should be done .in this Court with said presentment ?
    
      
      See monographic note on “Indictments, Informa-tions and Presentments” appended to Boyle v. Com., 14 Gratt. 674, monographic note on “Jurisdiction” appended to Phippen v. Durham, 8 Gratt. 457.
    
   Per Curiam.

“The Court is unanimously of opinion, and doth decide, that the Superior Court of Law of Dinwiddie county hath not jurisdiction to try and determine the offence stated in the Presentment; but, that the said Presentment ought to be by that Court certified to some Justice of the Peace of and for the county of Dinwiddie, to be by him acted on, pursuant to the first section of the Act of General Assembly, passed the 20th January, 1808, entitled “an Act to prevent further the practice of slaves going at large, or hiring out themselves.” 
      
       3 Rev. Code of 1808, ch. 119, incorporated into the Act in 1 Rev. Code of 1819, ch. 118. § 81.