Ex parte Morgan

• Citation: 78 F. Supp. 756
• Decision Date: 06 July 1948
• Docket Number: No. 8350.,8350.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of California
• Parties: Ex parte MORGAN.

78 F. Supp. 756

Ex parte MORGAN.

No. 8350.

District Court, S. D. California, Central Division.

July 6, 1948.

Richard A. Haley, of Los Angeles, Cal., for petitioner.

Ray L. Chesebro, City Atty., Donald M. Redwine, Asst. City Atty., and John L. Bland, Deputy City Atty., all of Los Angeles Cal., and Frank Richards, Deputy Atty., Gen., of California, for respondents.

YANKWICH, District Judge.

I.

Interstate Extradition.

The Constitution of the United States provides that a person charged in any State with treason, felony or other crime, who flees from justice, and is found in another State, shall be delivered to the State having jurisdiction of the crime on demand of the Executive authority of such State.¹

The object of this provision, which in the identical language appeared first in the Articles of Confederation of 1781, has been stated by the Supreme Court in this manner:

"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 S.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 district in which the crime shall have been committed from becoming a shield for the guilty rather than a defense for the innocent, which it was intended to be. Its design was, and is, in effect, to eliminate for this purpose, the boundaries of states, so that each may reach out and bring to speedy trial offenders against its laws from any part of the land.

"Such being the origin and purpose of these provisions of the Constitution and statutes, they have not been construed narrowly and technically by the courts as if they were penal laws, but liberally to effect their important purpose, with the result that one who leaves the demanding state before prosecution is anticipated or begun, or without knowledge on his part that he has violated any law, or who, having committed a crime in one state, returns to his home in another, is nevertheless decided to be a fugitive from justice within their meaning."²

Three conditions must concur before a person can be extradited. They are stated by the Supreme Court in a leading case:

"No person may be lawfully removed from one state to another by virtue of this provision, unless: 1, He is charged in one state with treason, felony, or other crime; 2, he has fled from justice; 3, a demand is made for his delivery to the state wherein he is charged with crime. If either of these conditions is absent, the Constitution affords no warrant for a restraint of the liberty of any person."³

The designation of the crimes within the constitutional provision has been held comprehensive enough to embrace "any offense, whatever its nature, which the State, consistently with the Constitution and laws of the United States, may have made a crime against its laws."⁴

The Courts have been equally liberal in determining who is a fugitive. Perhaps the broadest statement is this:

"To be a fugitive from justice, in the sense of the act of congress regulating the subject under consideration, it is not necessary that the party charged should have left the state in which the crime is alleged to have been committed, after an indictment found, or for the purpose of avoiding a prosecution anticipated or begun, but simply that, having within a state committed that which by its laws constitutes a crime, when he is sought to be subjected to its criminal process to answer for his offense, he has left its jurisdiction, and is found within the territory of another."⁵

II.

Implementing Legislation.

To give effect to this constitutional clause, the Congress enacted, on February 12, 1793, a statute which is the source of the present provision in the Criminal Code, the main portion of which, so far as material to this inquiry, reads:

"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."⁶

All States, including California, have statutes relating to the procedure to be followed when demand for extradition is addressed to their authorities. The California law now in effect derives from a uniform criminal extradition statute which has been adopted by a large number of states.⁷ The procedure, in substance, provides for honoring by the Governor of the State of a demand for extradition, for the issuance of a warrant of arrest, and the taking of the arrested person before a magistrate. On the whole, ample opportunity is given for questioning the validity of the extradition to satisfy the most punctilious observance of the requirements of due process. Here we are concerned only with certain specific clauses of the statute. The first of these reads:

"The Governor of this State may also surrender, on demand of the executive authority of any other State, any person in this State charged in such other State in the manner provided in section 1548.2 of this code with committing an act in this State, or in a third State, intentionally resulting in a crime in the State whose executive authority is making the demand. The provisions of this chapter, not otherwise inconsistent, shall apply to such cases, even though the accused was not in the demanding State at the time of the commission of the crime, and has not fled therefrom."⁸

Its application to the present case is brought into play by undisputed facts.

On June 4, 1948, the Governor of California honored a demand for extradition by the Governor of Colorado, dated May 27, 1948. The petitioner was arrested pursuant to a warrant of arrest issued thereafter, and placed in the custody of the Chief of Police of Los Angeles. On June 7, 1948, he applied for a writ of habeas corpus in the District Court of Appeal of California for the Second District, Division Two. That court heard the matter on June 9, 1948, and on June 15, 1948, discharged the writ. A petition for a similar writ filed in the Supreme Court of California on June 16, 1948, was denied on June 1, 1948. The present petition was filed on June 23, 1948, and a writ issued by me on the same day, returnable on June 25, 1948.

The petitioner has been for many years a resident of Burbank, Los Angeles County, California. The offense with which he is charged in Colorado is conspiracy to commit grand larceny, a crime denounced by Colorado statutes.⁹ He was not in the State of Colorado at the time of the alleged commission of the offense. And the inquiry centers around the proposition whether he was a fugitive within the meaning of the pertinent constitutional clause and the federal statute implementing it. This, in turn, brings up the question whether the provision of the California statute which allows extradition in cases where "the accused was not in the demanding State at the time of the commission of the crime and has not fled therefrom"¹⁰ is constitutional.

III.

Constitutionality of California Statute.

The petitioner contends that it is not. He urges that it conflicts both with the constitutional provision and the federal statute. It may be conceded that the federal statute¹¹ does not, in so many words, apply to offenses committed in the State by a person not present in it at the time of their commission. Nevertheless, it is accepted doctrine that a State may punish acts committed beyond its boundaries which result in a crime within the State. As said by Mr. Justice Holmes:

"Acts done outside a jurisdiction, but intended to produce and producing detrimental effects within it, justify a state in punishing the cause of the harm as if he had been present at the effect, if the state should succeed in getting him within its power."¹²

And the decisions of the Supreme Court, interpreting the federal statutes under consideration have held that the commission of an offense in a State while the defendant is not physically present in it, come within the purview of the constitutional provision.¹³ These cases stress the fact that the important factor in determining the matter is not so much actual presence of a person in a State as "having within a state committed that which by its laws constitutes a crime."¹⁴ This being so, state legislation in aid of the federal statute which governs such situations cannot be said to conflict with the letter or spirit of the constitutional provision.¹⁵ And high state courts which have had occasion to pass on such statutes have so ruled.¹⁶ The California District Court of Appeal followed these pronouncements in the opinion filed in this case.¹⁷

As these cases relate to federal constitutional interpretation, they are not binding on us. However, a study of them, in the light of the principles to which we have already alluded in the first portions of this opinion, leads us to the conclusion that they interpret the constitutional grant of power correctly, and that such...