Statutory provisions must be interpreted in the light of all
that may be done under them. In all controversies, civil and
criminal, between the government and an individual, the latter is
entitled to reasonable protection. The Fifth Amendment is satisfied
by one inquiry and adjudication, and an indictment found by the
proper grand jury should be accepted anywhere within the United
States as at least
prima facie evidence of probable cause
and sufficient basis for removal from the district where the person
arrested is found to the district where the indictment was
found.
The place where such inquiry must be had, and the decision of
the grand jury obtained, is the locality in which by the
Constitution and laws the final trial must be had.
On July 23, 1903, a grand jury of the Circuit Court of the
United States for the Eastern District of New York found and
returned an indictment under section 1781, Rev.Stat., charging
George W. Beavers, and officer of the government of the United
States, with having received money for procuring a contract with
the government for the Edward J. Brandt-Dent Company. A warrant for
the arrest of the official was issued to the marshal of the
district, and returned "not found." Thereupon a complaint,
supported by affidavit, was filed in the District Court of the
United States for the Southern District of New York, alleging the
finding of the indictment, the issue
Page 194 U. S. 74
of the warrant, the return "not found," and that Beavers was
within the Southern District of New York. Upon this complaint, a
warrant was issued, Beavers was arrested and brought before a
commissioner. A hearing was had before that officer, and upon his
report, the district judge of the southern district signed an order
of removal to the Eastern District. Before this order could be
executed, Beavers presented his petition to the Circuit Court of
the United States for the Southern District of New York for a writ
of habeas corpus. After a hearing thereon, the application for
discharge was denied, and thereupon an appeal was taken to this
Court.
Page 194 U. S. 82
MR. JUSTICE BREWER delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case turns upon the efficacy of an indictment in removal
proceedings. The government offered no other evidence of
petitioner's guilt. His counsel state in their brief:
"The controlling questions to be discussed on this appeal are
whether the indictment offered in evidence before the commissioner
can be regarded as conclusive evidence against the accused of the
facts therein alleged, whether it was competent at all as evidence
of such facts, and whether such indictment was entitled to be
accorded any probative force whatever."
At the outset, it is well to note that this is not a case of
extradition. There was no proposed surrender of petitioner by the
United States to the jurisdiction of a foreign nation, no
abandonment of the duty of protection which the nation owes to
all
Page 194 U. S. 83
within its territory. There was not even the qualified
extradition which arises when one state within the Union surrenders
to another an alleged fugitive from its justice. There was simply
an effort on the part of the United States to subject a citizen
found within its territory to trial before one of its own courts.
The locality in which an offence is alleged to have been committed
determines, under the Constitution and laws, the place and court of
trial. And the question is what steps are necessary to bring the
alleged offender to that place and before that court?
Obviously very different considerations are applicable to the
two cases. In an extradition, the nation surrendering relies for
future protection of the alleged offender upon the good faith of
the nation to which the surrender is made; while here, the full
protecting power of the United States is continued after the
removal from the place of arrest to the place of trial. It may be
conceded that no such removal should be summarily and arbitrarily
made. There are risks and burdens attending it which ought not to
be needlessly cast upon any individual. These may not be serious in
a removal from New York to Brooklyn, but might be if the removal
was from San Francisco to New York. And statutory provisions must
be interpreted in the light of all that may be done under them. We
must never forget that, in all controversies, civil or criminal,
between the government and an individual, the latter is entitled to
reasonable protection. Such seems to have been the purpose of
Congress in enacting ยง 1014, Rev.Stat., which requires that the
order of removal be issued by the judge of the district in which
the defendant is arrested. In other words, the removal is made a
judicial, rather than a mere ministerial, act.
In the light of these considerations, we pass to an inquiry into
the special matters here presented. Article V of the amendments to
the Constitution provides:
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital or otherwise
infamous crime unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand
jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces,
Page 194 U. S. 84
or in the militia, when an actual service in time of war or
public danger."
While many states, in the exercise of their undoubted
sovereignty,
Hurtado v. California, 110 U.
S. 516, have provided for trials of criminal offenses
upon information filed by the prosecuting officer, and without any
previous inquiry or action by a grand jury, the national
Constitution, in its solicitude for the protection of the
individual, requires an indictment as a prerequisite to a trial.
The grand jury is a body known to the common law, to which is
committed the duty of inquiring whether there be probable cause to
believe the defendant guilty of the offense charged. Blackstone
says (vol. 4, p. 303):
"This grand jury are previously instructed in the articles of
their inquiry, by a charge from the judge who presides upon the
bench. They then withdraw, to sit and receive indictments, which
are preferred to them in the name of the King, but at the suit of
any private prosecutor, and they are only to hear evidence on
behalf of the prosecution, for the finding of an indictment is only
in the nature of an inquiry or accusation, which is afterwards to
be tried and determined, and the grand jury are only to inquire,
upon their oaths, whether there be sufficient cause to call upon
the party to answer it. A grand jury, however, ought to be
thoroughly persuaded of the truth of an indictment, so far as their
evidence goes, and not to rest satisfied merely with remote
probabilities: a doctrine that might be applied to very oppressive
purposes."
The thought is that no one shall be subjected to the burden and
expense of a trial until there has been a prior inquiry and
adjudication by a responsible tribunal that there is probable cause
to believe him guilty. But the Constitution does not require two
such inquiries and adjudications. The government, having once
satisfied the provision for an inquiry and obtained an adjudication
by the proper tribunal of the existence of probable cause, ought to
be able, without further litigation concerning that fact, to bring
the party charged into
Page 194 U. S. 85
court for trial. The existence of probable cause is not made
more certain by two inquiries and two indictments. Within the
spirit of the rule of giving full effect to the records and
judicial proceedings of other courts, an indictment, found by the
proper grand jury, should be accepted everywhere through the United
States as at least
prima facie evidence of the existence
of probable cause. And the place where such inquiry must be had and
the decision of a grand jury obtained is the locality in which, by
the Constitution and laws, the final trial must be had.
While the indictment is
prima facie evidence, it is
urged that there are substantial reasons why it should not be
regarded as conclusive. An investigation before the grand jury, it
is said, is generally
ex parte -- although sometimes
witnesses in behalf of the defendant are heard by it -- and the
conclusion of such
ex parte inquiry ought not to preclude
the defendant from every defense, even the one that he was never
within the state or district in which the crime is charged to have
been committed, or authorize the government to summarily arrest him
wherever he may be found, transport him, perhaps, far away from his
home, and subject him, among strangers, to the difficulties and
expense of making his defense. It is unnecessary to definitely
determine this question. It is sufficient for this case to decide,
as we do, that the indictment is
prima facie evidence of
the existence of probable cause. This is not in conflict with the
views expressed by this Court in
Greene v. Henkel,
183 U. S. 249.
There, it appeared that, after an indictment had been found by a
grand jury of the United States District Court for the Southern
District of Georgia, the defendants were arrested in New York;
that, on a hearing before the commissioner, he ruled that the
indictment was conclusive evidence of the existence of probable
cause, and declined to hear any testimony offered by the
defendants. Upon an application to the district judge in New York
for a removal, he held that the indictment was not conclusive, and
sent the case back to the commissioner. Thereupon, testimony was
offered
Page 194 U. S. 86
before the commissioner, who found that there was probable cause
to believe the defendant guilty, and upon his report, the district
judge ordered a removal. We held that, under the circumstances, it
was not necessary to determine the sufficiency of the indictment as
evidence of the existence of probable cause, and that, as the
district judge found that probable cause was shown, it was enough
to justify a removal.
It is further contended that:
"There was no jurisdiction to apprehend the accused, because the
complaint on removal was jurisdictionally defective in that it was
made entirely upon information, without alleging a sufficient or
competent source of the affiant's information and ground for his
belief, and without assigning any reason why the affidavit of the
person or persons having knowledge of the facts alleged was not
secured."
This contention cannot be sustained. The complaint alleges on
information and belief that Beavers was an officer of the
government of the United States in the office of the First
Assistant Postmaster General of the United States; that, as such
officer, he was charged with the consideration of allowances for
expenditures and with the procuring of contracts with and from
persons proposing to furnish supplies to the said Post Office
Department; that he made a fraudulent agreement with the Edward J.
Brandt-Dent Company for the purchase of automatic cashiers for the
Post Office Department and received pay therefor; that an
indictment had been found by the grand jury of the eastern
district, a warrant issued and returned "not found," and that the
defendant was within the Southern District of New York. This
complaint was supported by affidavit, in which it was said:
"Deponent further says that the sources of his information are
the official documents with reference to the making of the said
contract and the said transactions on file in the records of the
United States of America and in the Post Office Department thereof
and letters and communications from the Edward J. Brandt-Dent
Company with reference to the said contract,
Page 194 U. S. 87
and from the indictment, a certified copy of which is referred
to in said affidavit as Exhibit A, and the bench warrant therein
referred to as Exhibit B, and from personal conversations with the
parties who had the various transactions with the said George W.
Beavers in relation thereto, and that his information as to the
whereabouts of the said George W. Beavers is derived from a
conversation had with the said George W. Beavers in said Southern
District of New York in the past few days, and from the certificate
of the United States Marshal for the Eastern District of New York,
indorsed on said warrant."
This disclosure of the sources of information was sufficient. In
Rice v. Ames, 180 U. S. 371, a
case of extradition to a foreign country, in which the complaint
was made upon information and belief, we said (p.
180 U. S.
375):
"If the officer of the foreign government has no personal
knowledge of the facts, he may with entire propriety make the
complaint upon information and belief stating the sources of his
information and the grounds of his belief and annexing to the
complaint a properly certified copy of any indictment or equivalent
proceeding which may have been found in the foreign country, or a
copy of the depositions of witnesses having actual knowledge of the
facts, taken under the treaty and act of Congress. This will afford
ample authority to the commissioner for issuing the warrant."
The indictment alone was, as we have seen, a showing of probable
cause sufficient to justify the issue of a warrant.
With reference to other questions we remark that, so far as
respects technical objections, the sufficiency of the indictment is
to be determined by the court in which it was found, and is not a
matter of inquiry in removal proceedings (
Greene v. Henkel,
supra); that the defendant has there no right to an
investigation of the proceedings before the grand jury, or an
inquiry concerning what testimony was presented to, or what
witnesses were heard by, that body. In other words, he may not
impeach an indictment by evidence tending to show that the grand
jury did not have testimony before it sufficient to
Page 194 U. S. 88
justify its action. Such seems to have been the purpose of most,
if not all, of the testimony offered by the petitioner in this
case. As his counsel stated during the progress of the examination
before the commissioner:
"We hold that we have an absolute right in a proper proceeding
to expose what took place before the grand jury. We don't do it at
all in order to make a disclosure of what transpired before a
secret body. We do propose to show what transpired before that
grand jury so as to show that there was not any evidence upon which
that body could have found an indictment -- a legal, valid, lawful
indictment -- against George W. Beavers. We have no other purpose
in calling this witness or any other witness who appeared before
the grand jury."
But the sufficiency of an indictment as evidence of probable
cause in removal proceedings cannot be impeached (if impeachable at
all) in any such manner. Neither can a defendant in this way
ascertain what testimony the government may have against him, and
thus prepare the way for his defense. There are no other questions
that seem to us to require notice.
We see no error in the record, and the judgment is
Affirmed.