Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/138/157
Timestamp: 2016-02-13 04:55:18
Document Index: 570790098

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1', '§ 17', 'art. 3', '§ 1781', '§ 8', '§ 730']

COOK v. UNITED STATES. | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
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138 U.S. 157 (11 S.Ct. 268, 34 L.Ed. 906)
COOK et al. v. UNITED STATES.
[HTML] Statement of Case from pages 157-160 intentionally omitted
Argument of Counsel from pages 160-165 intentionally omitted
The principal assignment of error is based upon these general propositions: That at the date of the alleged homicide the Public Land Strip was not within the jurisdiction of any particular state or federal district, and that no court of the United States had jurisdiction to try the alleged offense, or, if any court had jurisdiction, it was not the court below, but the circuit court of the United States for the northern district of Texas, or that of the district of Kansas, in which the defendants were found and arrested; and that, if the above act of March 1, 1889,under which alone this prosecution was conducted,placed the Public Land Strip within the limits of the eastern district of Texas, it did not, and consistently with the constitution of the United States could not, give the circuit court for that district jurisdiction of offenses committed prior to its enactment.
Did congress intend to attach the Public Land Strip to the eastern district of Texas for any purpose? That necessarily is the question to be first considered. And it must be determined without reference to the act of May 2, 1890, providing a temporary government for Oklahoma; for that act, while including this strip within the territory of Oklahoma, declares that all 'crimes committed in said territory' prior to its passage 'shall be tried and prosecuted, and proceeded with until finally disposed of, in the courts now then having jurisdiction thereof,' as if that act had not been passed. 26 St. pp. 81, 86, c. 182, §§ 1, 9. We will be aided in the solution of the question of jurisdiction by recalling the history of the Public Land Strip, and various acts of congress, preceding that of 1889, which are supposed to have some bearing upon this case.
By the act of February 21, 1857, the state of Texas was divided into two judicial districts,the western and the eastern. 11 St. 164. The northern district was established by an act passed February 24, 1879, with courts at Waco, Callas county, and Graham, Young county, embracing 110 counties by name, including Sherman, Hansford, Ochiltree, and Lipscomb in the Panhandle, immediately south of the Public Land Strip, and Hemphill, Wheeler, Collingsworth, and Childress, immediately west of the 100th meridian, and Harde. man, Wilbarger, Wichita, Clay, Montague, Cooke, Grayson, Fannin, and Lamar, immediately south of the Indian Territory, in the central and eastern parts of Texas, but excluding the counties of Red River and Bowie, in the latter state, near the Arkansas line. The same act enlarges the eastern district of Texas, and designates all the counties that should thereafter compose the eastern and western districts, respectively. Under this act the eastern district embraced, among others, the counties next to Louisiana and Arkansas, including Red River and Bowie. 20 St. p. 318, c. 97.
'§ 17. That the Chickasaw Nation, and the portion of the Choctaw Nation within the following boundaries, to-wit: Beginning on Red river at the south-east corner of the Choctaw Nation; thence north with the boundary line between the said Choctaw Nation and the state of Arkansas, to a point where Big creek, a tributary of the Black Fork of the Kimishi river, crosses the said boundary line; thence westerly with Big creek and the said Black Fork to the junction of the said Black Fork with Buffalo creek; thence north-westerly with said Buffalo creek to a point where the same is crossed by the old military road from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to Boggy Depot, in the Choctaw Nation; thence southwesterly with the said road to where the same crosses Perryville creek; thence north-westerly up said creek to where the same is crossed by the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railway track; thence northerly up the center of the main track of the said road to the South Canadian river; thence up the center of the main channel of the said river to the western boundary line of the Chickasaw Nation, the same being the north-west corner of the said nation; thence south on the boundary line between the said nation and the reservation of the Wichita Indians; thence continuing south with the boundary line between the said Chickasaw Nation and the reservations of the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache Indians to Red river; thence down said river to the place of beginning,and all that portion of the Indian Territory not annexed to the district of Kansas by the act approved January sixth, eighteen hundred and eighty-three, and not set apart and occupied by the five civilized tribes, shall, from an af ter the passage of this act, be annexed to and constitute a part of the eastern judicial district of the state of Texas, for judicial purposes.
Much of the discussion by counsel was directed to the inquiry whether the act of 1883 attached the Public Land Strip to the northern district of Texas. In view of the relations which certain Indian tribes once held to that strip, under treaties with the United Stateswhich treaties will be referred to in another connectionthere are some reasons for holding, in accordance with the contention of the government, that it was so attached to that district. But it is not necessary to decide that point; for, however it might be determined, the question would remain whether the Public Land Strip was not within that portion of the Indian Territory, defined in the act of 1889, which was assigned, by that act, for certain judicial purposes, to the eastern district of Texas. If it was, the court below had jurisdiction of the offense charged in the indictment, unless the latter act is construed as having no application to offenses committed prior to its passage. The act of 1883 is chiefly important in the present inquiry as it may serve to explain the provisions of the act of 1889.
It is certain that after, as well as before, the passage of the act of 1883, various public officers and committees in congress described the 'Indian Territory' as lying east of the 100th meridian, and represented the Public Land Strip as being unattached to any judicial district.
Upon a careful scrutiny of the act of 1889, giving full effect to all of its clauses, according to the reasonable meaning of the words used, yet interpreting it in the light of the previous history of the Public Land Strip, and of the information communicated to congress by public officers, we do not doubt that congress intended to bring that strip within the jurisdiction of the court established for the Indian Territory, and to attach it, for limited judicial purposes, to the eastern district of Texas; thus enabling the general government to protect its own interests, as well as the rights of individuals. That act was so interpreted by Mr. Justice BREWER before his accession to this bench. In re Jackson, 40 Fed. Rep. 372. Observe that the country over which the court established by that act was to exercise jurisdiction was not described as being east of the 100th meridian and south of Kansas, nor simply as the Indian Territory but, exindustria, as the Indian Territory bounded 'ort h by the state of Kansas, the southern line of that state constituting about two-thirds of the northern boundary of the Public Land Strip, east by the states of Missouri and Arkansas, south by the state of Texas, and west by the state of Texas and the territory of New Mexico.' If the act had bounded it on the north by Kansas and Colorado, the description, beyond all question, would have included the Public Land Strip. But the description, as it is, necessarily includes that strip, because the 'Indian Territory,' for which the new court, to sit at Muscogee, was established, being bounded on the north by Kansas, and west, in part, by 'the territory of New Mexico,'the eastern boundary of which is on the 103d meridian,must include within its limits the Public Land Strip, lying between New Mexico and the 100th meridian. This facts is of greater significance than the careless omission to state, in the act, that the Indian Territory, described in it, was bounded on the north by Colorado, as well as by Kansas. The court at Muscogee was given exclusive original jurisdiction over all offenses against the United States, not punishable by death or by imprisonment at hard labor, committed, not simply within the Indian Territory, but within the Indian Territory 'as in this that act defined,' while the court at Paris was given exclusive original jurisdiction of all offenses against the laws of the United States within the limits of that portion of the Indian Territory attached to the eastern district of Texas 'by the provisions of this that act,' of which jurisdiction was not given to the court at Muscogee. If congress did not intend to bring the Public Land Strip within the jurisdiction of the court established for the Indian Territory, and, for certain judicial purposes, within the jurisdiction of the courts held at Paris, in the eastern district of Texas, why did it declare that the Indian Territory, for which it legislated in the act of 1889, was bounded on the west 'by the state of Texas and the territory of New Mexico?' We cannot hold the words, 'and the territory of New Mexico,' to be meaningless, simply because the northern boundary of that strip was not described with precision and fullness; especially as every consideration of policy demanded that that part of the public domain should not longer be left without courts for the protection of the government and the people.
It is contended that the act, so construed, is in violation of section 2, art. 3, of the constitution, supplemented by the sixth amendment. The former provides that 'the trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the state where the said crimes shall have been committed; but, when not committed within any state, the trial shall be at such place or places as the congress may by law have directed.' The latter provides: 'In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law.' In respect to that clause of the sixth amendment declaring that the 'district shall have been previously ascertained by law,' it need only be said that, if those words import immunity from prosecution where the district is not ascertained by law before the commission of the offense, or that the accused can only be tried in the district in which the offense was committed, (the district having been established when the offense was committed) the amendment has reference only to offenses against the United States committed within a state. U. S. v. Dawson, 15 How. 467, 487, 488; Jones v. U. S., 137 U. S. 202, 211, 212, ante, 80. The second section of article 3 ad provided, in respect to crimes committed in the states, that the trial by jury should be had within the state where the crime was committed. The sixth amendment added the further guaranty, in respect to the place of trial, that the district should have been previously ascertained by law, leaving the trial of offenses not committed within any state to be controlled by the second section of article 3. The requirement in the latter section is that the trial 'shall be at such place or places as the congress may by law have directed.' 'As crimes,' said Mr. Justice Story, commenting upon this section, 'may be committed on the high seas and elsewhere, out of the territorial jurisdiction of a state, it was indispensable that in such cases congress should be enabled to provide the place of trial.' 2 Story, Const. § 1781. It was consequently provided in the act of April 30, 1790, (1 St. p. 114, c. 9, § 8,) that 'the trial of crimes committed on the high seas, or in any place out of the jurisdiction of any particular state, shall be in the district where the offender is apprehended, or into which he may first be brought.' And such was the law when the crime with which the defendants are charged was committed. Rev. St. §§ 730, 5339. But for the passage of the act of 1889, and if the Public Land Strip was not attached by the act of 1883 to the northern district of Texas, the defendants could have been indicted and tried in the district of Kansas where they were apprehended. Jones v. U. S., above cited. So that the contention of the defendants is, in effect, that in respect to crimes committed outside of the states in some place within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, congress is forbidden by the second section of article 3 of the constitution from providing a place of trial different from the one in which the accused might have been tried at the time the offense was committed. We do not so interpret that section. The words, 'the trial shall be at such place or places as the congress may by law have directed,' impose no restriction as to the place of trial, except that the trial cannot occur until congress designates the place, and may occur at any place which shall have been designated by congress previous to the trial. This was evidently the construction placed upon this section in U. S. v. Dawson, above cited, where the court, speaking by Mr. Justice NELSON, said: 'A crime, therefore, committed against the laws of the United States, out of the limits of a state, is not local, but may be tried at such place as congress shall designate by law. This furnishes an answer to the argument against the jurisdiction of the court, as it respects venue, trial in the county, and by jury from the vicinage, as well as in respect to the necessity of particular or fixed districts before the offense.' So, in U. S. v. Jackalow, 1 Black, 484, 486: 'Crimes committed against the laws of the United States, out of the limits of a state, are not local, but may be tried at such place as congress shall designate by law; but are localif committed within the state. They must then be tried in the district in which the offense was committed.' If congressas it did in the act of 1790, which may be regarded as a contemporaneous construction of the constitutionmay provide for the trial of offenses committed outside of the states, in whatever district the accused is apprehended, or into which he may first be brought, it is difficult to perceive why, such crimes not being local, it may not provide a place of trial where none was provided when the offense was committed, or change the place of trial after the commission of the offense.
It is said that the construction we place upon the second section of article 3 makes it obnoxious to the ex post facto clause of the constitution. In support of this position, reference is made to Kring v. Missouri, 107 U. S. 221, 2 Sup. Ct. Rep. 443, where it was declared that any statute passed after the commission of an offense which, 'inrel ation to that offense or its consequences, alters the situation of a party to his disadvantage,' is an ex post facto law. This principle has no application to the present case. The act of 1889 does not touch the offense nor change the punishment therefor. It only includes the place of the commission of the alleged offense within a particular judicial district, and subjects the accused to trial in that district rather than in the court of some other judicial district established by the government against whose laws the offense was committed. This does not alter the situation of the defendants in respect to their offense or its consequences. 'An ex post facto law,' thiscourt said in Gut v. State, 9 Wall. 35, 38, 'does not involve, in any of its definitions, a change of the place of trial of an alleged offense after its commission.' Another contention of the defendants is that the indictment is fatally defective, in that it fails to sufficiently show when Crossthe person alleged to have been murdereddied, or that he died within a year and a day from the infliction upon him of the alleged mortal wounds, or from the effect of such wounds, or within the territory in the jurisdiction of the court in which they were tried. As the attorney general and the solicitor general submit this question without argument, and without any suggestion in support of the indictment, and as the judgment must, for reasons to be presently stated, be reversed, leaving the government at liberty to find a new indictment, if its officers shall be so advised, we will not extend this opinion by an examination of the authorities cited by the defendants to show the present indictment to be defective.