In re Lewis

• Decision Date: 23 October 1897
• Court: United States District Court, District of Washington, Northern Division
• Parties: In re LEWIS et al.

83 F. 159

In re LEWIS et al.

United States District Court, D. Washington, Northern Division.

October 23, 1897

Wm. H Brinker, U.S. Atty., for petitioners.

A. R Colman and R. W. Jennings, for respondent.

The petitioners, being special employees of pecial employees of the treasury department of the United States, assisted in searching the premises of one Yee Gee, at Port Townsend under a search warrant issued by a United States commissioner. At the time of the search, certain papers supposed to contain incriminating evidence against Yee Gee, were seized. Afterwards the petitioners were arrested on a charge of robbery, and upon a preliminary examination were committed on that charge in default of bail. The United States district attorney sued out a writ of habeas corpus in their behalf. Upon the facts appearing by the sheriff's return and testimony, ordered that the petitioners be discharged from custody.

HANFORD District Judge.

The motion in behalf of the respondents to remand will be denied, and I shall order that the petitioners be discharged from custody. In deciding this case, I do not mean to say that the warrant which Mr. Kiefer issued was a lawful warrant, nor that the proceedings under it were proper proceedings. I do not mean to say that the petitioners were lawfully discharging their official duties in what they did. In my opinion, the warrant itself was improvidently and erroneously issued, and the proceedings were all ill-advised, and conducted with bad judgment. But where an officer, from excess of zeal or misinformation, or lack of good judgment in the performance of what he conceives to be his duties as an officer, in fact transcends his authority, and invades the rights of individuals, he is answerable to the government or power under whose appointment he is acting, and may also lay himself liable to answer to a private individual who is injured or oppressed by his action; yet where there is no criminal intent on his part he does not become liable to answer to the criminal process of a different government. With our complex system of government, state and national, we would be in an intolerable condition of the state could put in force its criminal laws to discipline United States officers for the manner in which they discharge their duties. Or, take it the other way, if the government of the United States should prosecute as criminals sheriffs and other ministerial officers, justices of the peace, and judges of superior courts for errors of judgment, or ignorance, causing blunders in the discharge of their duties, it would bring on a condition of chaos in a short time.

Counsel is mistaken, I think, in assuming that the court in this proceeding is so limited in its powers that it cannot consider the question of whether the defendants are guilty or not guilty of the charge of robbery upon which they were committed. It is true that this court could never adjudicate that question finally, so as to convict and punish these men for robbery if they were robbers; but in a proceeding of this kind it is absolutely necessary for the court to consider the question so far as to determine whether the officers acted wantonly and with criminal intent, or whether, in so far as their acts may be regarded as wrongful, they were mere errors of judgment. Take, for instance, the Neagle Case, 10 Sup.Ct 658. It is not to be conceived that, if Neagle had...