Ray v. Martin

• Decision Date: 01 March 1945
• Citation: 294 N.Y. 61,60 N.E.2d 541
• Parties: PEOPLE ex rel. RAY v. MARTIN, Warden.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

294 N.Y. 61

60 N.E.2d 541

PEOPLE ex rel. RAY

v.MARTIN, Warden.

Court of Appeals of New York.

March 1, 1945.

Appeal from Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Fourth Department.

Habeas corpus proceeding by the People of the State of New York, on the relation of Donald A. J. Ray, against Walter B. Martin, Warden of Attica State Prison. From an order of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, 268 App.Div. 218, 52 N.Y.S.2d 496, entered September 27, 1944, which unanimously affirmed an order of the Wyoming County Court, Conable, J., 181 Misc. 925, 47 N.Y.S.2d 883, dismissing the writ and remanding relator to the custody of respondent, relator appeals by permission.

Affirmed. Thomas J. McKenna, James B. McKenna, and Benjamin Galperin, all of Buffalo, for appellant.

Nathaniel L. Goldstein, Atty. Gen., and Beverly S. Galloway, Asst. Dist. Atty., of Olean (Henry S. Manley and Orrin G. Judd, both of Albany, and Wortley B. Paul, of Buffalo, of counsel), for respondent.

DESMOND, Judge.

Relator is serving in a New York State prison, a life sentence imposed on him by the Supreme Court of the State of New York on December 15, 1930, for the commission, at the city of Salamanca, in Cattaraugus County, New York, of a ‘felony murder.’ Penal Law, s 1044, subd. 2; s 1045-a. Almost the whole of the city of Salamanca, incluidng the scene of the killing, is within the bounds of the Allegany Reservation of the Seneca Nation of Indians. Relator is not an Indian, nor was his victim, one Paul Balsiger. In this habeas corpus proceeding relator asserts that the Supreme Court of this State was without any jurisdiction of his offense, committed as it was on an Indian reservation. No such challenge to the jurisdiction was made during relator's trial or on his appeal to the Appellate Division from the judgment of conviction, which appeal resulted in an affirmance by that court (259 App.Div. 1065, 22 N.Y.S.2d 119), or on a subsequent motion, denied by a Judge of this court, for leave to appeal to this court. We hold, nonetheless, that the alleged jurisdictional question may properly be raised by these habeas corpus proceedings. See People ex rel. Carr v. Martin, 286 N.Y. 27, 31, 32, 35 N.E.2d 636. The County Judge and the Appellate Division, fourth department, both wrote opinions (181 Misc. 925, 47 N.Y.S.2d 883 and 268 App.Div. 218, 52 N.Y.S.2d 496) in dismissing the writ. We granted leave, 59 N.E.2d 793, so that we might, if possible, set at rest any doubts as to whether the penal laws of this State apply to crimes committed in the city of Salamanca. The respective counsel have furnished us with extensive reviews of the writings on the very large subject of the jurisdiction of tribal, Federal and State courts over Indian reservations in the United States. We content ourselves with a statement of the bases for our conclusion that relator was properly indicted, tried and punished in the Supreme Court, despite the undoubted fact that the crime was committed on lands which form part of an Indian reservation. In general, our reasons for that conclusion are these: that there is no basis in any Treaty, Constitution or statute for an assertion by the Federal Government of exclusive jurisdiction over crimes committed by non-Indians against non-Indians on this reservation, that such jurisdiction has historically, by common consent and for sound legal reasons been assumed to exist, by the Federal and State courts in New York and elsewhere, that this is peculiarly so as to the reservations of the ‘Six Nations' in New York State, and finally, that there is a Federal statute making applicable to the city of Salamanca the general laws of the State of New York.

The Allegany Reservation of the Seneca Indians is wholly within New York State, has an area of about forty-two square miles and extends along both sides of the Allegany River, north from the Pennsylvania border. It is a part of the much more extensive lands occupied by the Seneca Nation before the American Revolution. Before our Federal Constitution was adopted, those Seneca lands were within the bounds of the State of New York. The Allegany Reservation was, accordingly, not created by the Federal Government out of United States Government lands within the State, and was never at any time territory of the United States. Seneca Nation of Indians v. Christie, 126 N.Y. 122, 136, 27 N.E. 275, affd. 162 U.S. 283, 16 S.Ct. 828, 40 L.Ed. 970. During colonial days there had been a protracted quarrel between New York and Massachusetts over a large territory (several million acres) including much of present-day Western New York, each colony claiming that its royal charter gave it sovereignty and jurisdiction over the disputed tract. In 1786, after the Declaration of Independence but before the adoption of the Federal Constitution, a compact was entered into between the sovereign States of Massachusetts and New York by the terms of which compact New York was recognized as having sovereignty and jurisdiction over the lands and Massachusetts was recognized as the owner of the ‘right of pre-emption’ of the lands themselves, including the right to extinguish such title as the Indians had. This compact, subsequently ratified by the Congress of the United States, authorized Massachusetts to grant and convey the right of pre-emption, as to any part of the lands involved, ‘to any person or persons, who by virtue of such grant, shall have good right to extinguish by purchase the claims of the native Indians * * *’. Massachusetts in 1791 conveyed its title, subject to the Indian claims, to Robert Morris, who later conveyed it to the Holland Land Company, Morris agreeing to extinguish the Indian rights at his own expense. He did so in 1797 when at a great council of the Senecas held at Geneso, New York, he received from the Seneca Nation a conveyance of all the lands purchased by him from the State of Massachusetts, excepting certain Indian reservations, including the Allegany Reservation with which we are here concerned. The council was held and the conveyance made with the approval of the Government of the United States, as represented by its Commissioner. See discussions of these transactions in Seneca Nation of Indians v. Christie, supra, and Jemison v. Bell Telephone Co., 186 N.Y. 493, 497, 79 N.E. 728.

Previous to the Geneso Council, and in 1794, there had been entered into at Kon-on-daigua (Canandaigua, N. Y.) a treaty between the United States of America and ‘the Tribes of Indians called the Six Nations' (including the Seneca Nation). By it ‘peace and friendship’ were to be ‘firmly established’ forever, between the United States and the Six Nations, 7 Stat. 44. The treaty contains a description by metes and bounds of the lands of the Seneca Nation, with an acknowledgment by the United States that the described lands were the property of the Nation, and a promise by our Government that the possession thereof by the Senecas would never be disturbed. The Senecas, on their part, covenanted that they would never claim any other lands within the boundaries of the United States. By article V the Senecas ceded to the United States the right to build a wagon road through part of their lands (not the Allegany Reservation) and the right of free passage through all the Seneca lands. Article VII of that Treaty of 1794 is one of relator's main reliances. By that article it was stipulated that, ‘lest the firm peace and friendship now established should be interrupted by the misconduct of individuals, * * * for injuries done by individuals on either side, no private revenge or retaliation shall take place; but, instead thereof, complaint shall be made by the party injured, to the other.’ If the depredation was by Indians, the complaint was to be made by the President, or a superintendent by him appointed, to the principal chiefs of the Six Nations or any of them; if the ‘private injury’ was by whites, then the complaint would go from the Indian Nation to the President, or his superintendent. Upon the entry of any such complaint, says article VII, ‘such prudent measures shall then be pursued as shall be necessary to preserve our peace and friendship unbroken; until the legislature (or great council) of the United States shall make other equitable provision for the purpose.’ Relator treats that last-quoted sentence as ‘provision * * * for future federal legislation which would cover the crime in question when committed within the Allegany Reservation.’ He says that the language ‘expressly excluded State laws from application to this Reservation.’ We cannot agree that it had any such meaning or effect, or that it referred at all to the question of what system of internal law should thereafter operate within the tribal lands. The Treaty was, in substance as well as form, a true treaty, made between the United States of America and the quasisovereign Six Nations. It was made not to set off lands to the Indians or to provide for their government, but as a treaty of peace to put an end to a state of war and guard against its recurrence. For this purpose border raids or other incursions were to be treated as ‘international incidents,’ and diplomatic representations thereupon were to be made by the aggrieved signatory to the other. The Treaty of 1794 was one of a long series of actual treaties made between the United States and Indian tribes until the practice was abolished in 1871. See Seneca Nation of Indians v. Christie, supra; Turner v. American Baptist Missionary Union, Fed.Cas.No.14,251, 5 McLean 344, 349;U. S. v. 43 Gallons of Whiskey, etc., 93 U.S. 188, 23 L.Ed. 846. It did not create any Indian reservation but confirmed the Senecas' aboriginal right of possession. See U.S. v. Santa Fe, Pacific R. Co., 314 U.S. 399, 62 S.Ct. 248, 86 L.Ed. 260. Nothing in the language of the pact, the circumstances giving rise to it, or the history of proceedings under it, furnish reason for holding that it had anything...