Court Opinion

ID: 9443219
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:14:24.687508+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:24.715050
License: Public Domain

WASHINGTON, Circuit Judge (dissenting).
The story of this case is a pathetic one. It is a drama that has been acted out countless times before. A husband cannot or will not support his wife and children, and when he enters the state that shelters them he is promptly arrested, tried and sentenced. That sort of treatment may or may not be a successful solution of the emotional and economic problems of the *37parties: a term of years on the chain gang may do very little to “reform” the offender or satisfy the needs of his family.
That much may be granted. But criminal punishment is the remedy most states rely upon in such a case; we rely upon it, in fact, in this jurisdiction. D.C.Code §§ 22-902, 22-903 (1940). One who is convicted of abandonment and non-support is thus placed by the law in the same position as one convicted of burglary or murder; both are criminal offenders, and for purposes of extradition the one occupies no more favored status than the other. Nor does the court in its decision today distinguish between a Willie Fowler and a John Dillinger. The decision by its terms applies to every one convicted of crime: the court holds that if the criminal was not physically present in the state when the crime occurred, he can escape punishment by fleeing to some other jurisdiction, even after he has been rightfully arrested, tried and convicted.
The consequences of such a ruling are at once apparent. In our day, organized crime extends its tentacles throughout the Nation and beyond. A “Murder, Inc.” may seek to operate over vast areas; so may schemes of fraud or theft. While some of these situations are the appropriate concern of the Federal Government, others must or should be dealt with by the several states. Now a new impediment is placed in the path of state law enforcement. If the leader of an interstate gang in New York procures the killing of a man in New Jersey, the New Jersey authorities can try him and punish him if he is ever seized within New Jersey’s boundaries. There can be no doubt about that.1 But today’s decision means that, once caught, such a murderer is a bird that must be tightly caged: he must not be permitted to leave the state, for then the state can never obtain his return by extradition.2 He must not be bailed or paroled beyond the boundaries of New Jersey; he must not be allowed a suspended sentence.3 He may be a bail-jumper or a convicted criminal at large, but he is not a “fugitive from justice,” because, forsooth, he was not within the boundaries of New Jersey at the time the crime was committed.
This strange result is without basis in principle or precedent. This is the first court ever to reach or announce such a conclusion. The Constitution and statutes on their face require the contrary. The conclusion embodied in the majority opinion must rest, in final analysis, on the view that the Supreme Court’s dictum in Hyatt v. People, etc., ex rel. Corkran, 1903, 188 U.S. 691, 23 S.Ct. 456, 47 L.Ed. 657, must be taken with absolute literalness, and that unless the relator was within the demanding state at the time the crime was committed he cannot under any circumstances be extradited. The Hyatt case simply does not stand for that proposition. The relator in Hyatt had never been within the clutches of the demanding state: he was never apprehended, much less tried, within its borders. He had never been subjected to the arm of its justice, and hence was not a fugitive from that justice. The relator before us here was arrested, tried and convicted in North Carolina. He is now a fugitive from the justice of that state in the fullest constitutional and statutory sense. Every sound principle and precedent requires that con*38elusion. State ex rel. Lea v. Brown, 166 Tenn. 669, 64 S.W.2d 841 (opinion of Justice Swiggart, and authorities there cited), certiorari denied 292 U.S. 638, 54 S.Ct. 717, 78 L.Ed. 1491;4 see also Strassheim v. Daily, 221 U.S. 280, 285, 31 S.Ct. 558, 55 L.Ed. 735; Ex parte Hoffstot, C.C., 180 F. 240, affirmed 218 U.S. 665, 31 S.Ct. 222, 54 L.Ed. 1201; United States ex rel. Miller v. Walsh, 7 Cir., 182 F.2d 264; Kay v. State, 34 Ala.App. 8, 37 So.2d 525. And see, generally, Johnson v. Matthews, 86 U.S.App.D.C. 376, 380, 182 F.2d 677, 681, certiorari denied 340 U.S. 828, 71 S.Ct. 65, 95 L.Ed. 608.5
The practical result of the decision today is to serve notice on state courts that their proceedings in cases of the present sort will become a mockery if they grant bail or any other measure of freedom to the prisoner. All he need do is to take the next train for Washington.
I would affirm.

. As Mr. Justice Holmes said in Strassheim v. Daily, 221 U.S. 280, at page 285, 31 S.Ct. 558, at page 560, 55 L.Ed. 735:
“Acts done outside a jurisdiction, but intended to produce and producing detrimental effects within.it, justify a state in punishing the cause of the harm as if he had been present at the effect, if the state should succeed in getting him within its power. Commonwealth v. Smith, 11 Allen 243, 256, 259; Simpson v. State, 92 Ga. 41, 17 S.E. 984, 22 L.R.A. 248; American Banana Co. v. United Fruit Co., 213 U.S. 347, 356, 29 S.Ct. 511, 53 L.Ed. 826, 832; Commonwealth v. Macloom, 101 Mass. 1, 6, 18.”
This follows even though the accused is kidnapped and brought within the jurisdiction by force and violence. Frisbie v. Collins, 342 U.S. 519, 72 S.Ct. 509.

. A premium would be put on obtaining his return by kidnapping or other violent means. Cf. Frisbie v. Collins, supra note 1.

. One may well imagine the effect the court’s decision will have on the treatment accorded future Willie Fowlers in North Carolina and elsewhere.

. In that case the Tennessee court refused to halt the extradition to North Carolina of Senator Luke Lea, who had returned to Tennessee after his trial and conviction by the North Carolina courts. The Supreme Court of the United States refused to review the case on certiorari. 292 U.S. 638, 54 S.Ct. 717, 78 L.Ed. 1491. On principle, and in its salient facts, that case appears to me identical with the case at bar.

. Whether the relator was within the boundaries of North Carolina at the time the offense was committed was a question for decision in the first instance by the courts of that state; they may, in fact, have regarded it as an immaterial question, once the relator became personally subject to the justice of North Carolina, for an offense properly punishable there. Cf. State v. Hinson, 209 N.C. 187, 183 S.E. 397. In any event, it has become in this case a question of the kind which this court should not (and in fact cannot) consider in an extradition proceeding under the Johnson case, supra.