Roberts v. State

• Decision Date: 06 November 1939
• Docket Number: 33665
• Citation: 186 Miss. 732,191 So. 823
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: ROBERTS v. STATE

191 So. 823

186 Miss. 732

ROBERTS v. STATE

No. 33665

Supreme Court of Mississippi, Division A

November 6, 1939

APPEAL from the circuit court of Oktibbeha County HON. JOHN C STENNIS, Judge.

Ira Roberts was jointly indicted with two others, and, on being separately tried, was convicted. Affirmed.

Affirmed.

John D Greene, Jr., of Starkville, and Rush H. Knox, of Jackson, for appellant.

The appellant in this case was a resident citizen of the State of Arkansas and had never been in any trouble or convicted of any crime except a few misdeameanor cases and for being drunk. He was apprehended and brought to the State of Mississippi for trial over his objections without legal process as provided by law. Our state so far as I have been able to find has not passed on this question but other states have.

In re Robinson, 29 Neb. 135, the court held: a person accused of committing a crime in Nebraska was arrested in Kansas by the order of a Kansas justice of the peace and delivered to a Nebraska constable, who forcibly and against the will of the accused, and without any warrant, requisition or other legal process, conveyed the accused out of the state of Kansas into Nebraska. Holding that the Nebraska court was without jurisdiction, the court said: "In principle there is no difference between the case at bar and where a person is held for an offense other than the one he was extradited for. In either case it is an abuse of judicial process, which the law does not allow. Ample provisions are made for the arrest and return of a person accused of crime who has fled to a sister state, by extradition warrants issued by the executives of the states. There is no excuse for a citizen or officer arresting without authority of law a fugitive, and taking him forcibly and against his will into the jurisdiction of the state for the purpose of prosecution. We cannot sanction the method adopted to bring the petitioner into the jurisdiction of this state. He did not come into the state voluntarily, but because he could not avoid it. The district court, therefore, did not acquire jurisdiction of the person of the petitioner and his detention is unlawful."

45 N.W. 267; 8 L.R.A. 398; 14 Am. Jur. 919, Sec. 217; 18 A.L.R. 509; 15 L.R.A. 177.

W. D. Conn, Jr., Assistant Attorney-General, for the State.

On motion for new trial one of the grounds assigned was that appellant was forcibly brought into this state from Arkansas without any legal process therefor. The way or manner in which a fugitive is brought back into this state from another...