Article IV, § 2, of the Constitution intends not to express the
law of extradition as usually prevailing among independent nations,
but to provide a summary executive proceeding whereby the states
may promptly aid one another in bringing accused persons to trial.
Its
Page 245 U. S. 129
provisions, and the statutes passed in execution of them, should
be construed liberally to effectuate this purpose.
A person indicted in due form for an offense against the laws of
a state, who was present in that state at the time when the offense
is so alleged to have been committed and subsequently leaves it,
becomes, within the meaning of the federal Constitution and laws, a
fugitive from justice, and upon the making of demand, accompanied
by certified papers, as required by § 5278 of the Revised Statutes,
the governor of the state in which he is found must cause him to be
arrested and delivered for extradition into the custody of the
authorized agent of the state whose laws are alleged to have been
violated.
An accused person arrested in interstate extradition
proceedings, who sues out habeas corpus to obtain his discharge on
the ground that he is not a fugitive from justice, is not entitled
to introduce evidence to prove that, after the date of the alleged
offense, he was "usually and publicly resident" within the
demanding state for a time sufficient to bar the prosecution under
its limitation statutes. The statute of limitations is a defense.
and must be asserted on the trial by the defendant in criminal
cases, and this Court has frequently decided that matters of
defense cannot be heard on habeas corpus to test the validity of an
arrest in extradition, but must be heard and decided at the trial,
by the courts of the demanding state.
Affirmed.
The case is stated in the opinion.
MR. JUSTICE CLARKE delivered the opinion of the Court.
In various indictments returned in the State of Illinois on May
5, 1916, against appellant, Guy B. Biddinger, he was charged with
having committed crimes in that
Page 245 U. S. 130
state at various times between the 15th day of October, 1908,
and the 2nd day of September, 1910. Each of these indictments
contained the allegation required by the Illinois practice that
"the said Guy B. Biddinger, since the 10th day of May, 1911, and
from thence hitherto, was not usually and publicly a resident
within this State of Illinois."
Transmitting the papers required by the United States statutes,
duly certified, the Governor of Illinois demanded of the Governor
of New York the extradition of Biddinger as a fugitive from
justice. The Governor of New York, after according the accused a
full hearing, issued to the Commissioner of Police of the City of
New York an executive warrant for his arrest and delivery to the
agent authorized to receive and convey him to Illinois, there to be
dealt with according to law. Upon this warrant, the appellant was
taken into custody.
Thereupon, on the petition of the appellant, a writ of habeas
corpus issued from the District Court for the Southern District of
New York, and the commissioner of police, making return thereto,
gave the executive warrant as his justification for the
imprisonment and detention of the accused. An elaborate traverse
was filed to this return, but, upon the hearing, the court
discharged the writ and remanded Biddinger to the custody of the
appellee.
On appeal to this Court, 25 errors are assigned, but on argument
only one is relied upon,
viz.: the action of the district
court in excluding evidence offered to prove that the accused had
been publicly and usually resident within the State of Illinois
continuously for more than three years after the dates on which he
was charged with having committed the crimes. This evidence was
tendered for the claimed purpose of proving that Biddinger was not
a fugitive from justice, and therefore was not subject to
extradition.
Page 245 U. S. 131
This claim of error requires the consideration of § 2 of Art.
IV, of the Constitution, and of § 5278 of the Revised Statutes of
the United States, as well as §§ 315 and 317 of the statutes of the
State of Illinois, which read as follows:
Constitution, Art. IV, § 2:
"A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other
crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state,
shall, on demand of the executive authority of the state from which
he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state having
jurisdiction of the crime."
United States Revised Statutes, § 5278:
"Whenever the executive authority of any state or territory
demands any person as a fugitive from justice, of the executive
authority of any state or territory to which such person has fled,
and produces a copy of an indictment found or an affidavit made
before a magistrate of any state or territory, charging the person
demanded with having committed treason, felony, or other crime,
certified as authentic by the governor or chief magistrate of the
state or territory from whence the person so charged has fled, it
shall be the duty of the executive authority of the state or
territory to which such person has fled to cause him to be arrested
and secured, and to cause notice of the arrest to be given to the
executive authority making such demand, or to the agent of such
authority appointed to receive the fugitive, and to cause the
fugitive to be delivered to such agent when he shall appear. . .
."
The statutes of Illinois [Hurd's Rev.Stats., 1915-1916] are:
Section 315.
"For Other Felonies. § 3. All indictments for other felonies
(including the crimes charged) must be found within three years
next after the commission of the crime, except as otherwise
provided by law."
Section 317.
"Time of Absence Not Counted. § 5. No period during which the
party charged was not usually
Page 245 U. S. 132
and publicly resident within this state shall be included in the
time of limitation."
Relying upon these constitutional and statutory provisions, the
argument is pressed upon our attention with much plausibility that
one who continues "usually and publicly" resident within the State
of Illinois for a longer period than that within which, under the
laws of that state, he may be prosecuted for the crimes charged
cannot, with due regard to the meaning of the language used, be
said to "flee," or "to have fled," from justice, or to be "a
fugitive from justice," if he afterwards leaves that state and is
found in another.
Thus is presented the question whether the order remanding the
accused into custody to be conveyed to the State of Illinois for
trial is in violation of the rights secured to him by the federal
Constitution and laws which we have quoted.
The provision of the federal Constitution quoted, with the
change of only two words, first appears in the Articles of
Confederation of 1781, where it was used to describe and to
continue in effect the practice of the New England colonies with
respect to the extradition of criminals.
Kentucky v.
Dennison, 24 How. 66. The language was not used to
express the law of extradition as usually prevailing among
independent nations, but to provide a summary executive proceeding
by the use of which the closely associated states of the Union
could promptly aid one another in bringing to trial persons accused
of crime by preventing their finding in one state an asylum against
the processes of justice of another.
Lascelles v. Georgia,
148 U. S. 537.
Such a provision was necessary to prevent the very general
requirement of the state constitutions that persons accused of
crime shall be tried in the county or district in which the crime
shall have been committed from becoming a shield for the guilty,
rather than the defense for the innocent, which it was intended
Page 245 U. S. 133
to be. Its design was and is, in effect, to eliminate, for this
purpose, the boundaries of states, so that each may reach out and
bring to speedy trial offenders against its laws from any part of
the land.
Such being the origin and purpose of these provisions of the
Constitution and statutes, they have not been construed narrowly
and technically by the courts as if they were penal laws, but
liberally to effect their important purpose, with the result that
one who leaves the demanding state before prosecution is
anticipated or begun, or without knowledge on his part that he has
violated any law, or who, having committed a crime in one state,
returns to his home in another, is nevertheless decided to be a
fugitive from justice within their meaning.
Roberts v.
Reilly, 116 U. S. 80;
Appleyard v. Massachusetts, 203 U.
S. 222;
Kingsbury's Case, 106 Mass. 223.
Courts have been free to give this meaning to the Constitution
and statutes because, in delivering up an accused person to the
authorities of a sister state, they are not sending him for trial
to an alien jurisdiction, with laws which our standards might
condemn, but are simply returning him to be tried, still under the
protection of the federal Constitution but in the manner provided
by the state against the laws of which it is charged that he has
offended.
The discussion of these provisions of the Constitution and
statutes for now much more than a century has resulted in the
formulation of this conclusion, more than once announced by this
Court (
Appleyard v. Massachusetts, 203 U.
S. 222,
203 U. S.
227):
"A person charged by indictment or by affidavit before a
magistrate with the commission within a state of a crime covered by
its laws, and who, after the date of the commission of such crime,
leaves the state -- no matter for what purpose or with what motive,
nor under what belief -- becomes, from the time of such leaving,
and within
Page 245 U. S. 134
the meaning of the Constitution and the laws of the United
States, a fugitive from justice, and, if found in another state,
must be delivered up by the governor of such state to the state
whose laws are alleged to have been violated, on the production of
such indictment or affidavit, certified as authentic by the
governor of the state from which the accused departed. Such is the
command of the supreme law of the land, which may not be
disregarded by any state."
The appellant admits that he was in the State of Illinois at the
time it is charged that he committed the crimes for which he was
indicted; that the indictments are in the form and are certified as
required by law, and that he was found in the State of New York.
This satisfies the requirement of the statute and, by its terms,
makes it the duty of the Governor of New York to cause Biddinger to
be arrested and given into the custody of the Illinois
authorities.
With these facts and this legal history before us, what shall be
said of the claim that, in a habeas corpus hearing, the court erred
in not permitting the appellant to introduce evidence tending to
prove that the prosecution was barred by showing that he was
"usually and publicly" in the demanding state during the three
years next after the date at which the crime is alleged to have
been committed, and that he therefore could not be a fugitive from
justice and subject to extradition?
The scope and limits of the hearing on habeas corpus in such
cases has not been -- perhaps it should not be -- determined with
precision. Doubt as to the jurisdiction of the courts to review at
all the executive conclusion that the person accused is a fugitive
from justice has more than once been stated in the decisions of
this Court.
Ex parte Reggel, 114 U.
S. 642;
Roberts v. Reilly, 116 U. S.
80;
Appleyard v. Massachusetts, 203 U.
S. 222, but the question not being necessary for the
disposition of the
Page 245 U. S. 135
cases in which it is touched upon, as it is not in this, it is
left undecided. This much, however, the decisions of this Court
make clear: that the proceeding is a summary one, to be kept within
narrow bounds, not less for the protection of the liberty of the
citizen than in the public interest; that, when the extradition
papers required by the statute are in the proper form, the only
evidence sanctioned by this Court as admissible on such a hearing
is such as tends to prove that the accused was not in the demanding
state at the time the crime is alleged to have been committed; and,
frequently and emphatically, that defenses cannot be entertained on
such a hearing, but must be referred for investigation to the trial
of the case in the courts of the demanding state.
The statute of limitations is a defense, and must be asserted on
the trial by the defendant in criminal cases (
United
States v. Cooke, 17 Wall. 168), and the form of the
statute in Illinois, which the appellant seeks to rely upon, makes
it especially necessary that the claimed defense of it should be
heard and decided by the courts of that state.
Pierce v.
Creecy, 210 U. S. 387;
Charlton v. Kelly, 229 U. S. 447;
Drew v. Thaw, 235 U. S. 432;
Reed v. United States, 224 F. 378;
Depoilly v.
Palmer, 28 App.D.C. 324.
It results that the decision of the district court must be
Affirmed.