Stamphill v. United States, 2666.

• Decision Date: 19 April 1943
• Docket Number: No. 2666.,2666.
• Citation: 135 F.2d 177
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit
• Parties: STAMPHILL v. UNITED STATES.

135 F.2d 177 (1943)

STAMPHILL v. UNITED STATES.

No. 2666.

Circuit Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit.

April 19, 1943.

Duke Duvall, of Oklahoma City, Okl., for appellant.

John Brett, Asst. U. S. Atty., of Oklahoma City, Okl. (Charles E. Dierker, U. S. Atty., of Oklahoma City, Okl., on the brief), for appellee.

Mac Q. Williamson, Atty. Gen., of Oklahoma, and Sam H. Lattimore, Asst. Atty. Gen., of Oklahoma, amicus curiae.

Before PHILLIPS, BRATTON, and HUXMAN, Circuit Judges.

BRATTON, Circuit Judge.

Appellant was convicted in the district court of Custer County, Oklahoma, of the offense of robbery with firearms and sentenced to a term of twenty years in the state penitentiary at Granite; about two months later, he and other prisoners escaped; in connection therewith, a guard was shot and killed; and appellant subsequently pleaded guilty in the district court of Greer County to the charge of murder and was sentenced to the state penitentiary at McAlester for the term of his natural life.

The indictment in this case, returned in the United States Court for Western Oklahoma, charged that appellant kidnapped a named person in Oklahoma and transported him into Texas, in violation of the Act of June 22, 1932, 47 Stat. 326, as amended by the Act of May 18, 1934, 48 Stat. 781, 18 U.S.C.A. § 408a. The court entered an order directing the issuance of a writ of habeas corpus ad prosequendum commanding the United States Marshal to bring appellant into court for the purpose of trial, directing the person in charge of the state penitentiary at McAlester to surrender him to the custody of the Marshal for such purpose, and further directing that upon final disposition of the cause the Marshal return him to the state penitentiary. The writ issued; and appellant was produced, tried, convicted, and sentenced to confinement in a United States penitentiary for the term of his natural life. Instead of being returned to the state penitentiary, he was first placed in the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth and is now confined in the like institution at Alcatraz, serving the sentence. Approximately five years after the sentence was imposed, he filed in the case a motion to vacate the judgment on the ground that at the time of its entry he was in the exclusive jurisdiction of the state for purposes of punishment for crime; that the United States Court acquired jurisdiction of him only for the limited purpose of trial; and that at the conclusion of the trial he should have been returned to the state penitentiary. The court denied the motion, and the appeal is from that order.

Elaboration upon the powers and prerogatives of the United States and of the state is unnecessary. It is enough to say that they are exercised within the same territorial limits, but the two sovereigns are separate and distinct. Each acts independently of the other within their respective spheres. Each has its own courts clothed with authority to declare and enforce its laws in the common territory. And arising out of inviolable rules of reciprocal comity essential to due and orderly procedure in the dual system, it is consistently held without deviation that when the court of one sovereign takes a person into its custody on a criminal charge he remains in the jurisdiction of that sovereign until it has wrought its function. No judicial process issued under authority of the other can wrest him from that jurisdiction and custody. Ableman v. Booth, 21 How. 506, 16 L.Ed. 169; Taylor v. Taintor, 16 Wall. 366, 21 L.Ed. 287; Covell v. Heyman, 111 U.S. 176, 28 L.Ed. 390; In re Johnson, 167 U.S. 120, 17 S.Ct. 735, 42 L.Ed. 103; Ponzi v. Fessenden, 258 U.S. 254, 42 S.Ct. 309, 66 L.Ed. 607, 22 A.L.R. 879; Rohr v. Hudspeth, 10 Cir., 105 F.2d 747; Wall v. Hudspeth, 10 Cir., 108 F.2d 865; Lunsford v. Hudspeth, 10 Cir., 126 F.2d 653; Farnsworth v. Zerbst, 97 F.2d 255; Farnsworth v. Sanford, 5 Cir., 103 F.2d 888, certiorari denied, 307 U.S. 642, 59 S.Ct. 1046, 83 L.Ed. 1523.

But a sovereign having the prior and exclusive jurisdiction and custody of a person for violation of its penal laws may voluntarily surrender him to the other for the purpose of trial on a criminal charge, and in such circumstances the question of jurisdiction and custody is essentially one of comity between the two sovereigns, not a personal right of the individual. Ponzi v. Fessenden, supra; Wall v. Hudspeth, supra; Lunsford v. Hudspeth, supra; Farnsworth v. Zerbst, supra; Cato v. Smith, 104 F.2d 885, certiorari denied, 308 U.S. 608, ...