Biddinger v. Commissioner of Police of City of New York
| Decision Date | 05 November 1917 |
| Docket Number | No. 426,426 |
| Citation | 62 L.Ed. 193,245 U.S. 128,38 S.Ct. 41 |
| Parties | BIDDINGER v. COMMISSIONER OF POLICE OF CITY OF NEW YORK |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Mr. Walter H. Pollak, of New York City, for appellant.
Messrs. Louis Marshall and Robert S. Johnstone, both of New York City, for appellee.
In various indictments returned in the state of Illinois on May 5, 1916, against appellant, Guy B. Biddinger, he was charged with having committed crimes in that state at various times between the 15th day of October, 1908, and the 2d day of September, 1910. Each of these indictments contained the allegation required by the Illinois practice that 'the said Guy B. Biddinger since the 10th day of May, 1911, and from thence hitherto was not usually and publicly a resident within this state of Illinois.'
Transmitting the papers required by the United States statutes, duly certified, the Governor of Illinois demanded of the Governor of New York the extradition of Biddinger as a fugitive from justice. The Governor of New York, after according the accused a full hearing, issued to the commissioner of police of the city of New York an executive warrant for his arrest and delivery to the agent authorized to receive and convey him to Illinois, there to be dealt with according to law. Upon this warrant the appellant was taken into custody.
Thereupon, on the petition of the appellant, a writ of habeas corpus issued from the District Court for the Southern District of New York, and the commissioner of police, making return thereto, gave the executive warrant as his justification for the imprisonment and detention of the accused. An elaborate traverse was filed to this return, but, upon the hearing, the court discharged the writ and remanded Biddinger to the custody of the appellee.
On appeal to this court 25 errors are assigned, but on argument only one is relied upon, viz.: The action of the District Court in excluding evidence offered to prove that the accused had been publicly and usually resident within the state of Illinois continuously for more than three years after the dates on which he was charged with having committed the crimes. This evidence was tendered for the claimed purpose of proving that Biddinger was not a fugitive from justice and therefore was not subject to extradition.
This claim of error requires the consideration of section 2 of article 4, of the Constitution, and of section 5278 of the Revised Statutes of the United States, as well as sections 315 and 317 of the statutes of the state of Illinois (Cr. Code), which read as follows:
Constitution, art. 4, § 2. A 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.
United States Revised Statutes, § 5278 (Comp. St. 1916, § 10126). 'Whenever the executive authority of any state or territory demands any person as a fugitive from justice, of the executive authority of any state or territory to which such person has fled, and produces a copy of an indictment found or an affidavit made before a magistrate of any state or territory, charging the person demanded with having committed treason, felony, or other crime, certified as authentic by the governor or chief magistrate of the state or territory from whence the person so charged has fled, it shall be the duty of the executive authority of the state or territory to which such person has fled to cause him to be arrested and secured, and to cause notice of the arrest to be given to the executive authority making such demand, or to the agent of such authority appointed to receive the fugitive, and to cause the fugitive to be delivered to such agent when he shall appear. * * *'
The statutes of Illinois are:
Section 315. For Other Felonies. Section 3. All indictments for other felonies (including the crimes charged) must be found within three years next after the commission of the crime, except as otherwise provided by law.
Section 317. Time of Absence Not Counted. Section 5. No period during which the party charged was not usually and publicly resident within this state shall be included in the time of limitation.
Relying upon these constitutional and statutory provisions, the argument is pressed upon our attention with much plausibility that one who continues 'usually and publicly' resident within the state of Illinois for a longer period than that within which, under the laws of that state, he may be prosecuted for the crimes charged, cannot, with due regard to the meaning of the language used, be said to 'flee,' or 'to have fled,' from justice, or to be 'a fugitive from justice,' if he afterwards leaves that state and is found in another.
Thus is presented the question whether the order remanding the accused into custody to be conveyed to the state of Illinois for trial is in violation of the rights secured to him by the federal Constitution and laws which we have quoted.
The provision of the federal Constitution quoted, with the change of only two words, first appears in the Articles of Confederation of 1781, where it was used to describe and to continue in effect the practice of the New England colonies with respect to the extradition of criminals. Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Dennison, 24 How. 66, 16 L. Ed. 717. The language was not used to express the law of extradition as usually prevailing among independent nations but to provide a summary executive proceeding by the use of which the closely associated states of the Union could promptly aid one another in bringing to trial persons accused of crime by preventing their finding in one state an asylum against the processes of justice of another. Lascelles v. Georgia, 148 U. S. 537, 13 Sup. Ct. 687, 37 L. Ed. 549. Such a provision was necessary to prevent the very general requirement of the state Constitutions that persons accused of crime shall be tried in the county or...
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