County of Allegheny v. McClung

• Decision Date: 07 January 1867
• Citation: 53 Pa. 482
• Court: Pennsylvania Supreme Court
• Parties: County of Allegheny <I>versus</I> McClung.

53 Pa. 482

County of Allegheny versus McClung.

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

January 7, 1867.

ERROR to the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny county.

R. B. Carnahan, for plaintiff in error, cited U. S. v. Cornell, 2 Mason 60, 91; Commonwealth v. Young, Brightly 302; People v. Godfrey, 17 Johns. 225; U. S. v. Traver, 2 Wh. Cr. Cases 490; People v. Lent, Id. 548; U. S. v. Weese, 2 Wallace, Jr. 722.

T. M. Marshall, for defendant in error.

The opinion of the court was delivered, January 7th 1867, by WOODWARD, C. J.

The only defence which the county set up against the coroner's claim of compensation was, that he had no right to hold an inquisition within the arsenal grounds, the jurisdiction of the Government of the United States being exclusive within those grounds. The Constitution of the United States gives Congress the exclusive power of legislation over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, &c. The legislative power over places so purchased is transferred from the state to the Federal government, and Congress might undoubtedly exclude coroners and all other state officers from exercising their functions upon such premises, unless restrained by some qualification in the expression of state consent. In the Act of Assembly of 19th March 1813, giving consent to the purchase by the Federal government of the arsenal grounds in question, there is this proviso: "That nothing herein contained shall extend, or be construed to extend, so as to impede or prevent the execution of any process, civil or criminal, under the authority of this state."

The Federal government then took the title, subject to the right of the state authorities to execute state process within the arsenal grounds, and when seventy-two citizens of the state had been suddenly killed by the explosion of the laboratory of the arsenal, had not the coroner a right to enter to hold his inquest? It would not be straining the language of the proviso very hard to hold that the coroner's inquest was criminal process; for under the statutes of Edward I. (Roberts's Dig. 100, 3 Binn. 601), and Henry VII., cap. 1 (Roberts's Dig. 102, 3 Binn. 616), which have been extended to Pennsylvania, and which are our only statutory definitions of the appropriate duties of the coroner, he is a judicial officer, and can only sit to hold his inquest super visum corporis, at the very place where...