John Wynne v. United States

Decision Date04 April 1910
Docket NumberNo. 449,449
Citation217 U.S. 234,54 L.Ed. 748,30 S.Ct. 447
PartiesJOHN WYNNE, Plff. in Err., v. UNITED STATES
CourtU.S. Supreme Court

Messrs. Henry E. Davis, Frank E. Thompson, Charles F. Clemons, and Britton & Gray for plaintiff in error.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 235-238 intentionally omitted] Assistant Attorney General Fowler for defendant in error.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 238-240 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice Lurton delivered the opinion of the court:

The plaintiff in error, John Wynne, has sued out this writ of error from a judgment and sentence of death for a murder committed on board the steamer Rosecrans, an American vessel, while lying in the harbor of Honolulu, in the territory of Hawaii. The indictment upon which he was tried included four counts. In each it was charged that the murder had been done on board the said American vessel, lying in the harbor of Honolulu, in the district and territory of Hawaii, and within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States, 'and out of the jurisdiction of any particular state of the said United States of America.' In two of the counts the locality is described as a certain 'haven' of the Pacific ocean, and in the others as a certain 'arm' of the Pacific ocean.

The question to which the counsel for the plaintiff in error has chiefly invited the attention of the court is whether the indictment charges an offense within the jurisdiction of the district court of the United States for the territory of Hawaii. It was founded upon § 5339, Rev. Stat. (U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 3627), and particularly the second paragraph. The section is set out below:

'Sec. 5339. Every person who commits murder——

'First. Within any fort, arsenal, dockyard, magazine, or in any other place or district of country under the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States.

'Second. Or upon the high seas, or in any arm of the sea, or in any river, haven, creek, basin, or bay within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States, and out of the jurisdiction of any particular state.

'Third. Or who, upon any such waters, maliciously strikes, stabs, wounds, poisons, or shoots at any other person, of which striking, stabbing, wounding, poisoning, or shooting such other person dies, either on land or at sea, within or without the United States, shall suffer death.'

Shortly stated, the contention is that the haven or arm of the Pacific ocean which constitutes the harbor of Honolulu, although 'within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States,' is a locality not 'out of the jurisdiction of any particular state,' because within the jurisdiction of the territory of Hawaii. The basis for the contention is that the words, 'out of the jurisdiction of any particular state,' do not refer to the jurisdiction of a state of the United States, but are to be given the wider meaning of out of the jurisdiction of any separate political community; and that the territory of Hawaii constitutes such a political organism. The postulate cannot be considered. The crimes act of April 30, 1790, chap. 9, 1 Stat. at L. 112, contained the same limiting words. Thus, in the 8th section of that act jurisdiction was asserted over the crime of murder, as well as certain other crimes, when committed 'upon the high seas, or in any river, haven, basin, or bay, out of the jurisdiction of any particular state.' The act was remolded by the act of March 3, 1825, chap. 65, § 4, page 115, 4 Stat. at L. (U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 3627). The further limitation of 'within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States' was added, but otherwise the jurisdiction remained the same. Without substantial change the provision of the last act was carried into the Revised Statutes as part of § 5339.

To support the contention urged, counsel have cited United States v. Bevans, 3 Wheat. 337, 388, 4 L. ed. 404, and Talbott v. Silver Bow County, 139 U. S. 438, 444, 35 L. ed. 210, 212, 11 Sup. Ct. Rep. 594. The indictment in the Bevans Case was for a murder done on board a war vessel of the United States while she lay at anchor a mile or more from the shores of the bay constituting the harbor of Boston, in the state of Massachusetts. The bay was wholly within the territorial jurisdiction of the state of Massachusetts, and the court said that it was not material whether the courts of that state had cognizance of the offense or not. 'To bring the offense,' said the court, 'within the jurisdiction of the courts of the Union, it must have been committed in a river, etc., out of the jurisdiction of any state. It is not the offense committed, but the bay in which it is committed, which must be out of the jurisdiction of the state. If, then, it should be true that Massachusetts can take no cognizance of the offense, yet, unless the place itself be out of her jurisdiction, Congress has not given cognizance of that offense to its courts. If there be a common jurisdiction, the crime cannot be punished in the courts of the Union.' The case has no bearing upon the question here involved, except so far as that the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States was there held to be excluded, because the place where the offense was committed was within the territorial jurisdiction of one of the states of the Union. The question in the Talbott Case was whether a territory was within the meaning of § 5219, Revised Statutes (U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 3502), which permitted a 'state within which' a national bank is located to tax its shares. The court held that the permission extended to states in that regard including territories. The decision was based upon the obvious intent of Gongress, looking to the scope and purpose of the act; the court saying, among other things: 'While the word 'state' is often used in contradistinction to 'territory,' yet, in its general public sense, and as sometimes used in the statutes and the proceedings of the government, it has the larger meaning of any separate political community, including therein the District of Columbia and the territories, as well as those political communities known as states of the Union.' But the word 'state,' as used in the 8th section of the act of 1790, and the subsequent act of 1825, as well as used in § 5339, Rev. Stat., must be determined from its own context. The word 'state,' as there used, has been uniformly held as referring only to the territorial jurisdiction of one of the United States, and not to any other government or political community. Thus, in United States v. Ross, 1 Gall. 626, Fed. Cas. No. 16,196, Mr. Justice Story said, in reference to the words in § 4 of the act of 1825, above referred to, that 'the additional words of the act, 'in any river, haven, basin, or bay out of the jurisdiction of any particular state,' refer to such places without any of the United States, and not without foreign states, as will be very clear on examining the pro- vision as to the place of trial, in the close of the same section.' In United States v. Griffen, 5 Wheat. 184, 189, 200, 5 L. ed. 64, 65, 68, one of the questions certified was 'whether the words, 'out of the jurisdiction of any particular state,' in the 8th section of the act of Congress of the 30th of April, 1790, chap. 9 [1 Stat. at L. 113, U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, p. 3643], . . . must be construed to mean out of the jurisdiction of any particular state of the United States,' To this the court said: 'We think it obvious that 'out of any particular state' must be constued to mean 'out of any one of the United States.' By examining the context it will be seen that 'particular state' is uniformly used in contradistinction to United States.' In United States v. Rodgers, 150 U. S. 249, 265, 37 L. ed. 1071, 1077, 14 Sup. Ct. Rep. 109, the same meaning was attached to the words in question, and an offense committed on the Detroit river, on a vessel belonging to a citizen of the United States, was held cognizable by the district court of the United States for the eastern district of Michigan, although it appeared that the offense had been committed within the territorial limits of the Dominion of Canada, and therefore not within the jurisdiction of any particular state of the United States. See also St. Clair v. United States, 154 U. S. 134, 144, 38 L. ed. 936, 939, 14 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1002, and Andersen v. United States, 170 U. S. 489, 42 L. ed. 1118, 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 689.

That there existed an organized political community in the Hawaiian Islands, exercising...

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