Holman Drew v. Harry Kendall Thaw

• Citation: 59 L.Ed. 302,35 S.Ct. 137,235 U.S. 432
• Decision Date: 21 December 1914
• Docket Number: No. 514,514
• Parties: HOLMAN A. DREW, Sheriff of Coos County, State of New Hampshire, Appt., v. HARRY KENDALL THAW
• Court: United States Supreme Court

235 U.S. 432

35 S.Ct. 137

59 L.Ed. 302

HOLMAN A. DREW, Sheriff of Coos County, State of New Hampshire, Appt.,

v HARRY KENDALL THAW.

No. 514.

Argued December 11, 1914.

Decided December 21, 1914.

Messrs.

William Travers Jerome, Franklin Kennedy, and James A. Parsons for appellant.

[Argument of Counsel from page 433 intentionally omitted] Messrs. P. C. Knox, William A. Stone, Merrill Shurtleff, and George F. Morris for appellee.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 434-437 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice Holmes delivered the opinion of the court:

This is an appeal from a final order discharging the appellee on habeas corpus. Thaw was held upon a warrant from the governor of New Hampshire for his extradition to New York, in pursuance of a demand of the governor of the latter state. He was alleged to be a fugitive from justice, and a copy of an indictment found by a New York grand jury accompanied the demand. The indictment alleged that Thaw had been committed to the Matteawan State Hospital for the insane under an order of court reciting that he had been acquitted at his trial upon a former indictment on the ground of insanity, and that his discharge was deemed dangerous to public safety. It then alleged that, being thus confined, he conspired with certain persons to procure his escape from the hospital, and did escape, to the obstruction of justice and of the due administration of the laws. By the New York Penal Law an agreement to commit any act for the perversion or obstruction of justice or of the due administration of the laws is a misdemeanor, if an overt act beside the agreement is done to effect the object. Penal Law, §§ 580, 583.

In the wide range taken by the argument for the appellee it was suggested, among other things, that it was not a crime for a man confined in an insane asylum to walk out if he could, and that therefore a conspiracy to do it could not stand in any worse case. But that depends on the statute. It is perfectly possible and even may be rational to enact that a conspiracy to accomplish what an individual is free to do shall be a crime. An individual is free to refuse his custom to a shop, but a conspiracy to abstain from giving custom might and in some jurisdictions probably would be punished. If the acts conspired for tend to obstruct the due administration of the laws, the statute makes the conspiracy criminal whether the acts themselves are so or not. We do not regard it as open to debate that the withdrawal, by connivance, of a man from an insane asylum, to which he had been committed as Thaw was, did tend to obstruct the due administration of the law. At least, the New York courts may so decide. Therefore the indictment charges a crime. If there is any remote defect in the earlier proceedings by which Thaw was committed, which we are far from intimating, this is not the time and place for that question to be tried.

If the conspiracy constituted a crime, there is no doubt that Thaw is a fugitive from justice. He was a party to the crime in New York, and afterwards left the state. It long has been established that, for purposes of extradition between the states, it does not matter what motive induced the departure. Roberts v. Reilly, 116 U. S. 80, 29 L. ed. 544, 6 Sup. Ct. Rep. 291; Appleyard v. Massachusetts, 203 U. S. 222, 226, 227, 51 L. ed. 161-163, 27 Sup. Ct. Rep. 122, 7 Ann. Cas. 1073. We perceive no ground whatever for the suggestion that in a case like this there should be a stricter rule.

The most serious argument on behalf of Thaw is that if he was insane when he contrived his escape, he could not be guilty of crime, while if he was not insane, he was entitled to be discharged; and that his confinement and other facts scattered through the record require us to assume that h...