The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1896-12-02
WITHOUT JURISDICTION.
Magistrates in this State Are in ap Anoma-
Ious Position.

The Magistrates OF this State are in
anomalous position. They are officers
without any jurisdiction either civil
or criminal. So Judge Earle has de-
cided in Barnwell, according to the
Sentinel of that county. a case was
brought before the Judge by Major L..
T. Izlar, who raised the point that the
Act providing for the appointment Of
Magistrates simply created the office
without prescribing the Jurisdiction
of the officers, and that as the old
Trial Justice system was constitution
al and had not been repealed, that
system was still Of force, making an
Office in existence without any officers
| TO fill them, for there are now no
Trial Justices. Judge Earle, accord
ing to the paper, decided that Major
Izlar was right and dismissed the case
against his client who had been ar
rested on order of a Magistrate. THIS
curious and unfortunate condition Of
affairs arose from the bill creating the
ollice Of Magistrate, which passed the
last Legislature after long and some.
what acrimonious debate. The bill
took away from the Governor The
power OF removing Magistrates, and
although great Gght was made to
strike out that feature, it did rot sue
| ceed. In accordance with right Civ
en- the Governor under the new Con-
stitution he approved that portion of
the bill which appointed Magistrates
and named their salaries, but "held
up the othel. portion Which took
away the power of removal and which
defined their duties, and thus it is that
there are Magistrates holding o!li2e
and drawing salaries who. according
to the judicial opinion, have no right
to absolutely do anything pertaining
to the duties usually devolving upon
such officers. Major Izlar raised the
point last spring and was about to be-
gin habeas corpus proceedings before
| the Supreme Court to test the matter
in the case of a certain prisoner in
Barnwell County. Governor Evans,
seeing the point and the complications
that would arise, pardoned the negro
and left Major Izlar high ard dry with
no case to proceed on. But he evil
IDENTIFY didn't-intend to be blocked and
got up another one before Judge Earle
ard won it. The same question came
up before Judge Benet last spring, in
| which he rendered a decision which
was generally thought to be OF the
same effect as that Of Judge Earle's,
but Governor Evans states that Judge
Benet says his decision has been mis-.
understood by the public, and that he
didn't decide that way.
1T can be easily seen 10 what disas-
trous results such state of affairs can
! lead. Law breakers will only have to
raise the point that the Magistrate has
no jurisdiction and that will settle it
as far as they are concerned, unless
the lawyers can devise some means to
hold them further. Those fellows
who have already been sent to the
chain gang or the Jail will likely kick
themselves that their lawyers didn't
discover the flaw in the law and save
them. But now they have no redress,
as they submitted without raising the
point of Jurisdiction. Governor Ev-
ans was asked yesterday what was to
be done about it, and said nothing
could be until the Legislature met
Columbia Register.