Ex parte Pierce

• Citation: 155 F. 663
• Decision Date: 15 May 1907
• Docket Number: 5,446.
• Parties: Ex parte PIERCE.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Missouri

155 F. 663

Ex parte PIERCE.

No. 5,446.

United States Circuit Court, E.D. Missouri, Eastern Division.

May 15, 1907

John D Johnson and H. S. Priest, for petitioner.

Barclay & Fauntleroy, for state of Texas and respondent.

ADAMS Circuit Judge.

Petitioner seeks to be discharged from an arrest made under a warrant issued by the Governor of Missouri, pursuant to a requisition made by the Governor of Texas, based upon an indictment charging him with the crime of false swearing as denounced by the statutes of Texas. The Constitution and statutes of the United States, which authorize and regulate the proceedings in extradition (article 4, Sec. 2, of the Constitution and section 5278, Rev. St. (U.S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 3597)), make two fundamental facts essential to extradition: (1) The person sought to be extradited must have been charged by some court of competent jurisdiction in the demanding state with some offense; (2) he must have fled from that state, and been found in another. No complaint is here made of the regularity of the proceedings to secure the warrant of arrest, and no claim is made that the petitioner did not, within the meaning of the law, flee; that is, depart from the state of Texas after the time he is alleged to have committed the offense in question. The sole ground for the petitioner's resistance to the warrant of arrest is that it does not appear that he has been charged with the commission of any offense in Texas and to this question alone attention need be given. On November 1, 1906, he was indicted by the grand jury of Travis county for the offense of false swearing, indictable under the laws of the state of Texas. The indictment charged him with having made on May 31, 1900, an affidavit wherein he swore among many other things, which for the sake of perspicacity will be omitted, that the Waters-Pierce Oil Company, a corporation of Missouri, organized on May 29 1900, of which he was president, was not then, on May 31, 1900, 'a party to * * * any agreement * * * or understanding with any other corporation, * * * to regulate or fix the price of any article of manufacture, * * * and was not then' a party to '* * * any agreement, * * * to fix or limit the amount of supply or quantity of any article of manufacture. * * * '

The indictment falsifies the affidavit in two respects, among others. It charges, in substance, that on the 31st day of May, 1900, as well as at other times, the Waters-Pierce Oil Company was a party to an agreement with the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, among others, to regulate and fix the price of petroleum, and to fix and limit the amount of supply and quantity thereof, and that petroleum was an article of manufacture. The charge so made is found in a maze of words in connection with other charges that the corporation was in a 'pool,' 'trust,' 'combination,' 'confederation,' to fix the price and limit the product of manufacture, and for other purposes. The indictment also charges that the Waters-Pierce Oil Company had been a member of such 'pool,' 'trust,' 'combination,' 'confederation,' etc., for four months prior to the date of its incorporation. Whatever strictures may be passed upon those features of the indictment falsifying the affidavit as to matters and things alleged to have occurred before the incorporation of the company, or whatever arguments may be drawn from the fact that the affidavit and indictment referred to 'pools,' 'trusts,' 'combinations,' and 'confederations,' etc., without setting forth the facts which constitute them, or without otherwise defining them, we are by force of the unequivocal language of the indictment brought to consider whether the charge that the petitioner made a false affidavit, to the effect that on the day he made it his company was not a party to any agreement with any other company or person to fix the price or limit the product of petroleum, states an offense of false swearing within the purview of the Texas statute. Section 752 et seq., Code Cr. Proc. Tex. 1895.

Whatever may have been the high degree of certainty required in framing indictments at common law, it is now well settled that refinement and technicality must yield to substantial things. The criterion for judging the sufficiency of indictments is whether the words employed make the charge clear to the 'common understanding.' Dunbar v U.S., 156 U.S. 185, 15 Sup.Ct. 325, 39 L.Ed. 390. 'The object of criminal proceedings is to convict the guilty, as well as to shield the innocent, and no impracticable standards of particularity should be set up whereby the government may be entrapped into making allegations which it would be impossible to prove. ' Evans v. United States, 153 U.S. 584, 591, 14 Sup.Ct. 934, 937, 38 L.Ed. 830. 'Few indictments * * * are so skillfully drawn as to be beyond the hypercriticism of astute counsel, few which might not be made more definite by additional allegations; but the true test is not whether it might possibly have been made more certain, but whether it contains every element of the offense intended to be charged, and sufficiently apprises the defendant of what he must be prepared to meet, and, in case other proceedings are taken against him for a similar offense, whether the record shows with accuracy to what extent he may plead a former acquittal or conviction. ' Cochran v. United States, 157 U.S. 286, 290, 15 Sup.Ct. 628, 630, 39 L.Ed. 704. Reasonable implications from facts clearly charged may be indulged in ascertaining the true meaning of an indictment. Rosen v. United States, 161 U.S. 30, 33, 16 Sup.Ct. 434, 40 L.Ed. 606; Clement v. United States, 7 C.C.A. 243, 149 F....