Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/184/270/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 18:50:29+00:00

Document:
GERHARD TERLINDEN, , v. JOHN C. AMES, United States Marshal for the Northern District of Illinois.
GERHARD TERLINDEN, Appt., v. JOHN C. AMES, United States Marshal for the Northern District of Illinois.
Argued: January 6, 7, 1902.
August 15, A. D. 1901, Dr. Walther Wever, Imperial German Consul at Chicago, filed his complaint before Mark A. Foote, Esq., a commissioner of the United States in and for the northern district of Illinois, and specially authorized to issue warrants for the apprehension of fugitives from justice of foreign governments, stating that he was 'the duly accredited official agent and representative of the German Empire at Chicago and also the Kingdom of Prussia, forming a part of said German Empire,' and charging that one Gerhard Terlinden, alias Theodor Graefe, a subject of the Kingdom dom of Prussia, did, within the first six months of the year 1901, 'commit within the jurisdiction of the said Kingdom of Prussia various crimes of forgery and counterfeiting and the utterance of forged papers,' in that as a director of the Gerhard Terlinden Stock Company, organized and doing business in said Kingdom, said Terlinden forged and counterfeited certain certificates of the stock of said company amounting to about a million and a half of marks, and put out, uttered, and disposed of the same to Robert Suermont of the city of Aachen, Prussia; the Amsterdamsche Bank, Netherlands; the Disconto Gesellschaft, a corporation doing business in Berlin, Prussia; and other persons and corporations, with felonious intent to cheat and defraud them respectively. The complaint further charged that Terlinden was at the time of committing said crimes a resident of the city of Duisburg and a citizen of said Kingdom of Prussia; that he was a fugitive from said Kingdom; that on or about the 1st day of July, 1901, he fled into the jurisdiction of the United States of America for the purpose of seeking an asylum therein; that he was now said to be concealed within the northern district of Illinois or in the eastern district of Wisconsin; and that the crimes with which he was charged were crimes embraced within the treaty of extradition between the United States and the Kingdom of Prussia, concluded on the 16th day of June, 1852, and ratified May 30, 1853.
'That the provisions of the Criminal Code of the German Empire applicable to the facts and circumstances of this case as shown by the evidence hereto annexed are §§ 240, 47, 49 1st paragraph; § 360 4th and 5th paragraphs; § 275 and § 56 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, also § 234 of the Civil Code, a correct translation of which sections are hereto annexed and marked Exhibit 'B' and made a part hereof.
'That said depositions so filed do not show or tend to show that your petitioner is guilty of any extraditable offense; that a copy of said deposition so referred to in said complaint and heretofore filed with said commissioner is hereto attached marked Exhibit 'A' and made a part of this traverse.
Thereafter, on November 5, the district court entered an order finding that the petitioner was lawfully restrained of his liberty, directing the petition to be dismissed, and remanding petitioner, from which an appeal was taken to this court. Errors were assigned, in substance, that the court erred in declining to hold that no treaty exists between the United States and the Kingdom of Prussia or the German Empire; in assuming the existence of such treaty; in denying the right to introduce evidence for the purpose of showing that no extraditable offense had been committed; in denying the application for a certiorari; in holding that the record showed the commission of an extraditable offense.
Pursuant to § 5270 of the Revised Statutes (and the acts from which that section was brought forward), complaint was duly made before a commissioner appointed and authorized by the district court of the United States for the northern district of Illinois to hear applications for extradition and to issue warrants therefor, charging Terlinden with having as a subject of the Kingdom of Prussia, and within the jurisdiction of that Kingdom, committed the crimes of forgery, counterfeiting, and the utterance of forged instruments, and with being a fugitive from the justice of said Kingdom.
Attached to the complaint and referred to therein were duly authenticated 1 copies of certain depositions taken before the examining judge of the court of Duisburg, Prussia, in which an investigation against Terlinden, that he might answer for said several crimes, was pending, together with a copy of the warrant for the arrest of Terlinden issued by that court, and of the provisions of the Penal Code of the German Empire applicable to the crimes in question and providing punishment therefor.
The settled rule is that the writ of habeas corpus cannot perform the office of a writ of error, and that, in extradition proceedings, if the committing magistrate has jurisdiction of the subject-matter and of the accused, and the offense charged is within the terms of the treaty of extradition, and the magistrate, in arriving at a decision to hold the accused, has before him competent legal evidence on which to exercise his judgment as to whether the facts are sufficient to establish the criminality of the accused for the purposes of extradition, such decision cannot be reviewed on habeas corpus. Ornelas v. Ruiz, 161 U. S. 502, 508, 40 L. ed. 787, 789, 16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 689, and cases cited; Bryant v. United States, 167 U. S. 104, sub nom. Ex parte Bryant, 42 L. ed. 94, 17 Sup. Ct. Rep. 744.
The statute in respect of extradition gives no right of review to be exercised by any court or judicial officer, and what cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly through the writ of habeas corpus. The court issuing the writ may, however, 'inquire and adjudge whether the commissioner acquired jurisdiction of the matter, by conforming to the requirements of the treaty and the statute; whether he exceeded his jurisdiction; and whether he had any legal or competent evidence of facts before him, on which to exercise a judgment as to the criminality of the accused. But such court is not to inquire whether the legal evidence of facts before the commissioner was sufficient or insufficient to warrant his conclusion.' Blatchford, J., in Re Stupp, 12 Blatchf. 501, Fed. Cas. No. 13,563; Ornelas v. Ruiz, 161 U. S. 508, 40 L. ed. 787, 16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 689.
By § 754 of the Revised Statutes it is provided that the complaint in habeas corpus shall set forth 'the facts concerning the detention of the party restrained, in whose custody he is detained, and by virtue of what claim or authority, if known;' and by § 755 that the writ shall be awarded 'unless it appears from the petition itself that the party is not entitled thereto.' On the face of the complaint extraditable offenses were charged to have been committed, and if petitioner desired to assert, as he now does in argument, that it appeared from the depositions taken before and the warrant of arrest issued by the court at Duisburg and the provisions of the Criminal Code that such was not the fact, they should have been set out. Craemer v. Washington, 168 U. S. 128, 42 L. ed. 407, 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1.
Generally speaking, 'whether an extraditable crime has been committed is a question of mixed law and fact, but chiefly of fact, and the judgment of the magistrate rendered in good faith on legal evidence that the accused is guilty of the act charged, and that it constitutes an extradiable crime, cannot be reviewed on the weight of evidence, and is final for the purposes of the preliminary examination unless palpably erroneous in law.' 161 U. S. 509, 40 L. ed. 789, 16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 691.
Counsel for petitioner states in his brief that on January 1, 1872, the German Imperial Code went into effect, embracing provisions as to the crime of forgery 'contained in §§ 267, 268, 146, and 149, the very sections quoted in the depositions filed with the amended complaint.' Counsel for respondent agrees with this except that he includes §§ or &Par; 147 and 270. All these are given below as furnished by counsel for respondent. 1 And see Drage's Criminal Code of the German Empire, 227, 266. The traverse set up that there were filed with the complaint 'a copy of all depositions taken in said matter, together with a copy of the warrant of arrest issued by said court against the said Gerhard Terlinden, alias Theodor Graefe, and of the provisions of the Penal Code of the German Empire applicable to said several crimes, and providing punishment therefor.' The traverse did not set forth the warrant of arrest or the provisions of the Code referred to, and merely attached certain other provisions which it was averred were applicable. The presumptions were against petitioner, apart from which accepting the admissions of counsel, extraditable offenses were charged, if the laws quoted applied, as we think cannot be denied. We are unable to perceive that these laws were not the laws of Prussia, although prescribed by imperial authority, and the record discloses that they were being administered as such, in Prussia, by the Royal Prussian Circuit court at Duisburg. The inquiry into the source of the laws of the demanding government is not material, and the objection is untenable.
Treaties are of different kinds and terminable in different ways. The 5th article of this treaty provided, in substance, that it should continue in force until 1858, and thereafter until the end of a twelve months' notice by one of the parties of the intention to terminate it. No such notice has ever been given, and extradition has been frequently awarded under it during the entire intervening time.
February 22, 1868, a treaty relative to naturalization was concluded between the United States and His Majesty, the King of Prussia, on behalf of the North German Confederation, the 3d article of which read as follows: 'The convention for the mutual delivery of criminals, fugitives from justice, in certain cases, concluded between the United States on the one part and Prussia and other states of Germany on the other part, the sixteenth day of June, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-two, is hereby extended to all the states of the North German Confederation.' 15 Stat. at L. 615. This recognized the treaty as still in force, and brought the Republics of Lubeck and Hamburg within its scope. Treaties were also made in that year between the United States and the Kingdoms of Bavaria and Wurtemburg, concerning naturalization, which contained the provision that the previous conventions between them and the United States in respect of fugitives from justice should remain in force without change.
'In so far as by-laws and treaties of the Empire relating to the extradition of criminals, provisions which bind all the states of the union have not been made, those states are not hindered from independently regulating extradition by agreements with foreign states, or by laws enacted for their own territory.
In the notes accompanying the State Department's compilation of Treaties and Conventions between the United States and Other Powers, published in 1889, Mr. J. C. Bancroft Davis treats of the subject thus: 'The establishment of the German Empire in 1871, and the complex relations of its component parts to each other and to the Empire, necessarily give rise to questions as to the treaties entered into with the North Greman Confederation and with many of the states composing the Empire. It cannot be said that any fixed rules have been established.
In the United States, the general opinion and practice have been that extradition should be declined in the absence of a conventional or legislative provision. 1 Moore, Extradition, 21; United States v. Rauscher, 119 U. S. 407, 30 L. ed. 425, 7 Sup. Ct. Rep. 234.
If it be assumed in the case before usand the papers presented on the motion for a stay advise us that such is the fact that the commissioner, on hearing, deemed the evidence sufficient to sustain the charges, and certified his findings and the testimony to the Secretary of State, and a warrant for the surrender of Terlinden on the proper requisition was duly issued, it cannot be successfully contended that the courts could properly intervene on the ground that the treaty under which both governments had proceeded, had terminated by reason of the adoption of the Constitution of the German Empire, notwithstanding the judgment of both governments to the contrary.
Sec. 5271. In every case of complaint and of a hearing upon the return of the warrant of arrest, any depositions, warrants, or other papers offered in evidence, shall he admitted and received for the purpose of such hearing if they shall be properly and legally authenticated so as to entitle them to be received as evidence of the criminality of the person so apprehended, by the tribunals of the foreign country from which the accused party shall have escaped, and copies of any such depositions, warrants, or other papers, shall, if authenticated according to the law of such foreign country, be in like manner received as evidence; and the certificate of the principal diplomatic or consular officer of the United States resident in such foreign country shall be proof that any such deposition, warrant, or other paper, or copy thereof, is authenticated in the manner required by this section.
267. Whoever with unlawful intent forges or counterfeits a domestic or foreign public instrument or such a private instrument as may be of importance for the purpose of proving rights or legal relations, and makes use of the same for the purpose of deception, is punishable with imprisonment for forgery of instruments.
1. When the instrument is a private instrument, with imprisonment in the penitentiary up to five years, besides which a fine not exceeding 3,000 marks may be imposed.
2. When the instrument is a public instrument, with imprisonment in the penitentiary for a term not exceeding ten years, besides which a fine of from 150 to 6,000 marks may be imposed.

References: v. 
 v. 
 § 360
 § 275
 § 56
 § 234
 § 5270
 v. 
 v. 
 v. 
 § 754
 § 755
 v. 
 v.