United States v. Pridgeon

• Decision Date: 16 April 1894
• Docket Number: No. 1,070,1,070
• Citation: 153 U.S. 48,14 S.Ct. 746,38 L.Ed. 631
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. PRIDGEON
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

153 U.S. 48

14 S.Ct. 746

38 L.Ed. 631

UNITED STATES

v PRIDGEON.

No. 1,070.

April 16, 1894.

Sol. Gen. Maxwell, for the United States.

D. K. Watson, for appellee.

Mr. Justice JACKSON delivered the opinion of the court.

At the September term, 1890, of the district court for the first judicial district of Logan county, Oklahoma Territory, and for the Indian country attached thereto for judicial purposes, sitting with the powers of a district court of the United States of America, the appellee, Sidney S. Pridgeon, was regularly indicted for horse stealing by the grand jurors of the United States of America within and for Logan county, and that part of the Indian country attached thereto for judicial purposes, after having been first duly sworn, impaneled, and charged to inquire of offenses against the laws of the United States committed therein. He was thereafter tried and convicted of the offense with which he was charged; and the court thereupon, on February 12, 1891, entered judgment upon the conviction as follows: that 'the said Sidney S Pridgeon, for the said offense by him committed, be imprisoned in the Ohio state penitentiary, at Columbus, and confined at hard labor, for the term of five years,—said term to begin at 12 o'clock m., February 12, 1891,—and to pay the costs of this prosecution, amounting to the sum of two hundred and thirty-two dollars and fifty-three cents, and to stand committed until the amount of said costs shall have been fully paid.'

In pursuance of this sentence, Pridgeon was transported to, and confined in, the Ohio state penitentiary, in which the usual discipline for prisoners confined therein includes 'hard labor.'

On July 7, 1893, Pridgeon applied to the United States circuit court for the southern district of Ohio, eastern division, for a writ of habeas corpus to be discharged from the custody of the warden of the state penitentiary, alleging in his petition that he was wrongfully restrained of his liberty—First, because the court which tried, convicted, and sentenced him had no jurisdiction in the premises; and, second, that the sentence imposed was beyond the power and jurisdiction of the court, and therefore void. Upon the hearing of the petition, the circuit court, without passing upon the question of jurisdiction of the court which imposed the sentence, held that the prayer of the petitioner should be granted, for the reason that the sentence should have been for imprisonment, alone, and that the imposition of 'hard labor,' as a part of the punishment, rendered the whole sentence void; and thereupon the petitioner was discharged. 57 Fed. 200. From this decision the United States appealed the case to the United States circuit court of appeals for the sixth circuit. That court, in view of the important questions arising upon the record, and the doubt which it entertained as to the correct decision thereof, certified to this court the following questions:

'First. Was horse stealing on November 12, 1890, in the Indian country, within the boundaries of Oklahoma Territory, as defined by the act of congress passed May 2, 1890, a crime against the United States, and punishable under the act of congress passed February 15, 1888, denouncing horse stealing in the Indian Territory?

'Second (assuming the first question is answered in the negative). Was the indictment against Pridgeon fatally defective on collateral attack by writ of habeas corpus, in that it lays the venue of the offense 'at and within that part of the territory of Oklahoma attached for judicial purposes to Logan county,' with a description of territory which includes part of Oklahoma and part of the Cherokee Outlet not in Oklahoma, and avers the same to be 'then and there Indian country, and a place then and there under the sole and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States of America?'

'Third. Are the sentence of Pridgeon, and his commitment in acordance therewith, void by reason of the fact that they included, as part of his punishment during his imprisonment in the Ohio penitentiary, confinement at hard labor?'

Assuming that the first question certified has reference to such parts of the Indian country as were embraced within the boundaries of Oklahoma Territory, and formed a part thereof, as defined and established by the act of May 2, 1890 (26 Stat. 81), it admits of little or no doubt that this question must be answered in the negative. Indeed, the solicitor general, on behalf of the United States, frankly and properly concedes that the act of February 15, 1888 (25 Stat. 33), the first section of which provides 'that any person hereafter convicted in the United States courts having jurisdiction over the Indian Territory, or parts thereof, of stealing any horse, mare, gelding, filly, foal, ass, or mule, when said theft is committed in the Indian Territory, shall be punished by a fine of not more than one thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not more than fifteen years, or by both such fine and imprisonment, at the discretion of the court,' was superseded by the act of May 2, 1890, with respect to so much of the Indian Territory as was included within the boundaries and made a part of the Oklahoma Territory.

The act of May 2, 1890, which created the territory of Oklahoma out of part of the Indian Territory, after defining the territorial limits of the new territory, and vesting the executive power thereof in a governor; the legislative power in the governor, and a legislative assembly; the judicial power in a supreme court, district courts, probate courts, and justices of the pence, provided, by the eleventh section thereof, that certain named chapters and provisions of the Compiled Laws of the state of Nebraska, in force November 1, 1889, including part 3, entitled the 'Criminal Code,' 'in so far as they are locally applicable, and not in conflict with the laws of the United States or with this act, are hereby extended to, and put in force in, the territory of Oklahoma until after the adjournment of the first session of the legislative assembly of said territory.'

This provision of the act had the effect of establishing for the territory of Oklahoma, until the first meeting and adjournment of its legislature, the Criminal Code of Nebraska. Among the criminal laws thus provisionally put in force in Oklahoma until after the adjournment of the first session of the legislature were sections 117 and 498 of the Nebraska Criminal Code, which provides that the punishment for horse stealing shall be imprisonment in the penitentiary for not more than ten years and for not less than one year, and 'in all cases when any person shall be convicted of any offence by this Code declared criminal, and made punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary, the court shall declare in their sentence for what period of time within the respective periods prescribed by law such convict shall be imprisoned at hard labor in the penitentiary.'

This Criminal Code remained in force from May 2, 1890, until December 24, 1890, when the first territorial legislature of Oklahoma adjourned. It thus clearly appears that the only law by which horse stealing within the territorial limits of Oklahoma, as defined by the act of May 2, 1890, could be punished on November 4 and 12, 1890,—the dates of the offense for which Pridgeon was indicted,—was the above Criminal Code of Nebraska, which congress adopted for the territory. Larceny being a crime of local nature, it can hardly be supposed that congress intended that the provisions of the act of February 15, 1888, prescribing punishment for horse stealing in the Indian Territory, should remain in force in the territory of Oklahoma after the erection of the territorial government and the special adoption of the Criminal Code of Nebraska for the territory, until after the adjournment of its first legislature, or that the general provision of the Revised Statutes (section 5356) relating to larceny 'upon the high seas, or in any place under the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States,' should apply to that territory.

We are therefore clearly of opinion that the act of February 15, 1888, was not in force in the territory of Oklahoma on November 4 and 12, 1890, but had been superseded by the provisions of section 11 of the act of May 2, 1890, adopting the Criminal Code of Nebraska as a provisional code for the territory; and it follows that the first question certified by the circuit court of appeals must be answered in the negative.

But it is suggested on behalf of the United States that the provisional and temporary adoption by congress of the Nebraska Criminal Code for the territory of Oklahoma had the effect of making larceny or horse stealing an offense against the United States, punishable on the federal side of the courts of the territory. The supreme court of the territory has held that the Criminal Code of Nebraska, established by congress, was to be treated as if it had been enacted by the territorial legislature, and was to be dealt with as if the crimes thereby declared were crimes, not against the United States, but against the territory. Thus, in Ex parte Larkin, 1 Okl. 53, 57, 25 Pac. 745, Green, C. J., says: 'It was intended by congress that the laws of Nebraska should constitute a territorial code, as distinguished from the laws of the United States in force in the territory of Oklahoma, and that they should sustain the same relations to the courts and to the people of the territory, and to the legislative assembly, as a code of laws enacted by the legislative assembly.'

If, as suggested by counsel for the government, section 11 of the act of May 2, 1890, could be treated as establishing the provisional Criminal Code, therein mentioned, as a law of the United States, and as creating offenses against the federal government, pending the first session and adjournment of the Oklahoma lagislature, so as to make horse stealing during that time a crime, not against the...