Court Opinion

ID: 9811452
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 22:21:02.729701+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:14:29.711229
License: Public Domain

Clark, J.
(dissenting): It is a fact agreed in this petition that the defendants being in this State slew the deceased who was over the line in Tennessee. The defendants were indicted in this State for the murder and convicted. On appeal, the conviction was reversed, this Court holding (State v. Hall, 114 N. C., 909) that there was a defect of jurisdiction because the offence was committed in Tennessee, and that in legal contemplation the parties committing the crime were in Ten-V nessee. If they were in Tennessee, when they committed | the crime, they are now in North Carolina, and in legal con-i'templation are necessarily fugitives from justice. If they were not in Tennessee, but in North Carolina, when they committed the crime, then it was error to hold that the defendants could not be convicted in North Carolina. They should be tried in the jurisdiction in which they were when the offence was perpetrated. That has been held to be in Tennessee. If that is sound law, and the defendants were then, in law, in Tennessee, and now, in fact, are in North Carolina, they are in, legal contemplation and within the language and purport of the extradition law, “ fugitives from justice."” This term is intended to embrace those who, having committed a crime in one State, endeavor to evade justice by being in a noth er^i State whither the ordinary process of the State where the crime was committed will not reach them. That is the situation of these defendants. They are sheltering themselves from process by being in another State. They are charged with murder in Tennessee and are now where the ordinary process of the Courts of that State can*821not reach them. They can only be had for trial in the State of the commission of the crime, by application to the Governor of the State where they are to be found. They are proper subjects of extradition.
If a mob, occupying the Jersey side of the Hudson, should shell the city of New York, or from the opposite shore of the Delaware should cannonade the city of Philadelphia, its members would be liable to no punishment in New Jersey under the decisions of the Courts because, “in contemplation of law,” the mobs are in New York and Pennsylvania. But if it is true, as is contended by the defendants, that the members of the mob cannot be extradited because the mob never was in those cities, it would, be a singular state of things.* . This ruling would also place Savannah, Memphis, St, Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville and hundreds of other cities and towns at the mercy of any mob which might assemble, with weapons of long range, across the State line.
The preamble to the Constitution of these States recites that it was ordained “to form a more perfect union and insure domestic tranquility.” Article IV., sec. 2, clause 2, provides, “That any person charged in any State with treason, felony or other crime, who shall flee from justice and be found in another State, shall, on demand of the Executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime.” It would be a restricted construction, and little calculated to “form a more perfect union and establish domestic tranquility,” to hold that a “fugitive from justice,” in the purview of this provision, applies only to persons who, being actually, as well as potentially, in the State where the crime was committed, afterwards departed the same. A person who places himself £ outside the limits of the State from thence to commit the « crime within said State, and ever afterwards avoids going t into said State to avoid arrest, as truly “flees from justice” as I he who, having committed a crime, flees from the State sub-«j sequently.
*822If an infernal machine sent by mail or express from a distant State explodes and kills the receiver, it is murder committed in the latter State. The sender, skulking in another State to avoid arrest is as truly a fugitive from justice as if he had accompanied the machine to its destination and then fled. The constitutional provision for extradition, and the laws passed in pursuance thereof, it should be remembered, are not criminal, but remedial provisions. They should therefore be liberally construed to effect the purpose intended to be served, which is to extend into another State, through the medium of its Executive, the process of the State whose laws have been violated. This process having no validity beyond its borders can only be made available to arrest the person charged with crime by virtue of the Governor of the State, where such person is to be found, acting under the extradition just as a magistrate of one county may endorse a summons issued by a Justice of the Peace in another county, under The Code.
Civilized man must recoil from the practical ruling that the territory adjacent to State boundaries is a “ no man’s land,” and that murder is privileged if committed across a State line. It may be safely said that the Judge who first laid down “a ruling, from which such result practically follows, did not foresee the purport and effect of his decision. We are called upon to correct, not to perpetuate, his errors, though others have since followed him. It is true that this restricted construction has been placed on this clause by several Courts and text-writers. But their opinions are merely of “ persuasive authority,” as we have often held, and entitled only to the weight due to the reasons they give.
Years ago Chancellor Kent (1 Com. 477) said that it would not do “to press too strongly the rule of stare decisis, when it is recollected that over one thousand cases in the English and American books have been overruled. Even a series of decisions are not always conclusive, and the revision of a *823decision often resolves itself into a mere question of expediency.” His remark has received added force since by the fact that overruled cases now number several thousand. Especially a constitutional .provision cannot be nullified or rendered of no effect by the erroneous ruling of a Judge. When the choice is presented us, it is his error, and not the Constitution, which must be disregarded. This is clearly so if the Constitution is superior to the power of a Court to amend it by erroneous interpretation.
Courts do not yet claim infallibility and are not above correcting errors, especially in a matter so clearly against the very intent and meaning of the Federal Constitution as a ruling that, though a murder has been committed in the United States, yet a State may be powerless either to try the murderer when found in its borders or to surrender him to another State, where he may be tried.
There is no authority or precedent in this State, and this being with us a case “of novel impression,” we are not hampered from giving such construction to the clause as is most consonant to our views of its true intent and purport. It is true the several States might pass statutes broader than the clause quoted from the Federal Constitution, but it is also true that some of them might fail to do so. The Federal Constitution does not contemplate leaving the security of so many cities and towns, lying near State boundaries, dependent upon the inadvertence or unwillingness of the Legislature of a neighboring State to pass an extradition law more liberal than the Federal Constitution. Besides, our statute (Code § 1165) is broader, and authorizes the arrest of “any fugitive” who has committed the crime therein specified “ out of the State and within the United States.” A fugitive from justice is simply one who, having committed a crime within a State^keeps himself beyond the ordinary process of the Courts of such State. The two cases cited from the Supreme Court of the United States, Ex parte Reggel, 114 U. S., 642, *824and Roberts v. Reily, 116 U. S., 80, read according to the spirit instead of the letter, sustain rather than militate against this view. In which case he can be demanded of the executive of any State in which he may be found.
Even if there had been no constitutional provision and no statute, the comity existing between States in a Federal Union would authorize and require the surrender to another State of a person who has committed murder in that State while standing in this State. Should a man on French soil fire and kill a man across the Rhine on German territory, and the French government, while declaring its own courts incompetent to try the slayer, should at the same time refuse, as is here done, to deliver him to Germany to be tried, would not war promptly follow? Yet, certainly, the protection to the criminal should be less and the comity greater, between States in the same Union. This comity between States recognizes corporations chartered in other States. It should certainly recognize that murder is a high offence at common law against a sister State, and we should refuse to shelter the perpetrator when demanded for trial.
In refusing to discharge the prisoner, I think there was no error.
MacRae, J.: I join in the above dissent.