Lawbreaker

“ They are through out punitive and highly penal; they punish with death or with imprisonment almost as bad as death, the crime of treason; they create a new crime, that of rebellion, and punish it with imprisonment or fine, or with both, at the discretion of the court, and, to all these penalties superadd those of confiscation and of civil disability, heretofore unknown to our penal code. No one can doubt, that this is a penal statute designed to punish treason and rebellion. ”

“ A community in which no crime had been committed by any of its members, against none of whom had a warrant been issued or a complaint made, who had resisted no process in the hands of a real or pretended officer, was threatened with destruction in the name of "law and order," and that, too, by men who marched from a neighboring state with arms obtained by force, and who, in every stage of their progress, violated many laws, and among others the constitution of the United States. ”

“ Can one who judicially establishes his innocence of any offense be punished for crime by the action of a ministerial officer? Can he be punished because he has failed to show to the satisfaction of that officer that he is innocent of an offense? The Constitution declares that 'the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when, in cases of invasion or rebellion, the public safety may require it.' There is no rebellion or invasion. ”

“ But if the erection of the Barony contain a power of Pit and Gallows, it imports a jurisdiction in ordinary capital cases, but not in the excepted crimes, which go under the name of the Four Pleas of the Crown, viz., Murder, Robbery, Rape, and wilful Fire-raising. It is so called from the manner of execution of criminals, viz., by hanging the men upon the Gallows or Gibbet, and drowning the women, sentenced in a capital crime, in a pit, it not being thought decent of old to hang them.” [691]
In old law Latin this right was known under the name of furca et fossa. ”

“ The genius, the nature, the spirit of our state governments amount to a prohibition of such acts of legislation, and the general principles of law and reason forbid them. Per Chase, J. Ibid.
15. The words and intent of the prohibition embrace, 1st, every law that makes an action done before the framing of the law, and which was innocent when done, criminal, and punishes such action; 2d, every law that aggravates a crime, or makes it greater than it was when committed; 3d, every law that changes the punishment, and inflicts a greater punishment than the law annexed to the crime when committed ”

“ As if I detain a field from another man, to which the law has given him a right, this is a civil injury, and not a crime; for here only the right of an individual is concerned, and it is immaterial to the public, which of us is in possession of the land : but treason, murder, and robbery are properly ranked among crimes ; since, besides the injury done to individuals, they strike at the very being of society ”

“ Every the most thoughtless and reckless breach of a law sets aside the Lawgiver, and usurps legislation to the law-breaker. The law-breaker makes his own law. No doubt, however, there are more heedful offenders. There are those who look the law in the face, and with impious hardness of heart, and wilfully approaching God, break his laws. They are proud Sinners.
TALBOYS. In the Seventh—the Book of the Creation—we are told
“The World was made for Man, and Man for God.” ”

“ No one may enter another's land and tenements by strong hand nor with a mob, upon pain of imprisonment and ransom at the King's will.
Charters, releases, obligations, quitclaim deeds and other deeds burnt or destroyed in uprisings shall be reissued without fee, after trial by the king and his council. Manumissions, obligations, releases and other bonds and feoffments in land made by force, coercion or duress during mob uprisings are void.
Men who rape and women consenting after a rape shall lose their inheritance and dower and joint feoffments. ”

“ 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 on the executive authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the crime. ”

“ Under a Legislation which should strictly and systematically embrace every possible crime against the outward Rights of the Citizens, and under an Administration from which actual crime could seldom or never conceal itself or escape the punishment threatened by the Law, every thought of crime, as something wholly vain and leading to nothing but certain punishment, would at once be stifled in its birth. ”

“ BREACH OF THE SABBATH.
At the late session of the S.J. Court at Northampton it was decided that a justice of the peace could not issue a warrant for a breach of the Sunday laws against an offender that is not an inhabitant of the county where the offence is committed, but that he must be prosecuted only before a grand jury; and that justices of the peace could not issue warrants, nor sheriffs serve them, on the Lord's day, for any breaches of those laws. Damages were awarded against a justice, a tythingman, and a sheriff, upon the latter principle. ”

“ But where the courts are good, and presided over by well-trained judges, the penalties to be inflicted may be in a great measure left to them; and as there are to be good courts among our colonists, we need not determine beforehand the exact proportion of the penalty and the crime. Returning, then, to our legislator, let us indite a law about wounding, which shall run as follows:--He who wounds with intent to kill, and fails in his object, shall be tried as if he had succeeded. ”

“ Thus, murdering two people simultaneously might well warrant two punishments but stealing two one-dollar bills might not. (b) Two statutes or two portions of a single statute proscribe certain conduct, and the question is whether the defendant can be punished twice because his conduct violates both proscriptions. Thus, selling liquor on a Sunday might warrant two punishments for violating a prohibition law and a blue law, but feloniously entering a bank and robbing a bank, though violative of two statutes, might warrant but a single punishment. ”

“ But we repeat, if a court martial has no jurisdiction over the subject-matter of the charge it has been convened to try, or shall inflict a punishment forbidden by the law, though its sentence shall be approved by the officers having a revisory power of it, civil courts may, on an action by a party aggrieved by it, inquire into the want of the court's jurisdiction, and give him redress. ”

“ The violation of right in one case is proceeded against by the method of indictment, in the other by an 'action.' The distinction that in one case punishment is the object of the process, in the other redress, is introduced in order to explain the difference of procedure; and to justify this distinction resort is had to the further distinction, that civil injury is considered to affect the individual merely, crime to affect the state. ”

“ Whenever traitors shall be fairly convicted, by the verdict of their peers, before the competent tribunal, if one branch of the legislature, without the concurrence of the other, shall attempt to rescue the offenders from the sentence of the law, I shall not hesitate, sitting in this place, to say to the General Court, Fiat justitia, ruat coelum; and, to the usurping branch of the legislature, you attempt worse than a vain thing; for although you cannot succeed, you set an example which may convulse society to its centre. ”

“ The law which ordains confiscations, sets a price on the head of the subject, with the guilty punishes the innocent, and by reducing them to indigence and despair, tempts them to become criminal. Can there be a more melancholy spectacle, than a whole family, overwhelmed with infamy and misery, from the crime of their chief? ”

“ Here belong the secret courts of criminal justice in the middle ages and the feudal law, which bear weighty evidence to the impotence or the partiality of the criminal courts of the time and to the weakness of the state power; in the present, dueling, which is a palpable proof that the penalties which the state inflicts on attacks on one’s honor are not sufficient to satisfy the delicate feeling of honor of certain classes of society. ”

“ And if any judge shall appoint his own slave, or the slave of another, to transact any legal business, the judge who appointed him shall render full satisfaction to the law for whatever injustice said slave shall commit. Any bailiff who, acting under the orders of such an usurper of judicial authority, shall arrest or imprison any one, or remove any of his property, shall be scourged with a hundred lashes, and, in this way, shall pay the penalty of his insolence. ”

“ His character is under the protection of the court.”
“No, sir!” said the advocate, with energy; “no court, however high,—no tribunal, beneath that of Heaven itself, whose decrees we dare not question,—can throw a shield over a man like this. There are crimes which stain the nation they occur in; which, happening in our age, make men sorry for their generation, and wish they had lived in other times.” ”

“ The constitutional prohibition was intended to protect every man's rights against that kind of legislation which seeks either to inflict a penalty without a trial or to inflict a new penalty for an old matter. ”

“ As tending to destruction; it is likewise unlawful to amerce or fine a man convicted of a crime, beyond what he has a possibility of paying; for that would tend to perpetual imprisonment, and disabling him from maintaining himself and family. Neither is it lawful, tho’ a man be indicted of treason or felony, for the king to grant, or even to promise, the forfeiture of his lands or goods ”

“ Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty, than the severity of punishment. Hence in a magistrate, the necessity of vigilance, and in a judge, of implacability, which, that it may become an useful virtue, should be joined to a mild legislation. ”

“ If the fugitive being once in custody, should of his own accord evade his keeper and escape, or being excited by others to do so, should make the attempt, and an obstruction should be interposed to hinder the reception of the fugitive, the offence would be precisely the same as it would have been, had the same obstruction been interposed to the original seizure or arrest ”

“ Accordingly, we are here confronted with a statute which, by its own words and as applied, purports to punish mere advocacy and to forbid, on pain of criminal punishment, assembly with others merely to advocate the described type of action. ”

“ If that court was without jurisdiction, by reason of the paramount authority of the constitution and laws of the United States, to compel the plaintiff in error, in response to the writ of habeas corpus, to produce the prisoner, then his committal for contempt was the denial of a right, privilege, and immunity secured by the supreme law of the land. The claim by the plaintiff in error that there was such a denial constitutes the foundation of our jurisdiction. ”

“ Nay, this court, in favour of liberty, hath a power, in all cases; they may, if they see proper, bail a man for crimes that are not ordinarily bailable by common law.
Fifthly, they have a right to hold plea of all the trespasses done vi & armis, though brought principally for a private reparation to the party; for this action favours of a criminal nature, and the king is entitled to a fine for the breach of the peace. ”

“ In recognition of this right, so reserved to the states, the words of the clause in reference to fugitives from justice were made sufficiently comprehensive to include every offense against the laws of the demanding state, without exception as to the nature of the crime. ”

“ But it is again to be observed, that the legislature has not referred for a description of place to any previous parts of the law, but has inserted a description, and by so doing, has materially varied the obvious sense of the section. 'Every person who shall, either upon the land or the seas, knowingly and wittingly aid,' &c. The probability is, that the legislature designed to punish all persons amenable to their laws, who should, in any place, aid and assist, procure, command, counsel, or advise, any person or persons to commit any murder or piracy punishable under the act. ”

“ Be it enacted, &c., That if any person or persons, residing in any State or Territory, shall unlawfully combine or conspire together, with intent to invade, assail, or molest the government, inhabitants, property, or institutions, of any other State or Territory, or if any person or persons, with intent as aforesaid, shall counsel, advise, or attempt to procure any riot, invasion, unlawful assembly, or combination, whether such conspiracy, threatening, counsel, advice, or attempt, shall have the proposed effect or not, he or they shall be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor ”

“ Our classification of it as private is unaffected by the fact that certain crimes, such as treason and sedition, are offences against the state. As already explained, logical consistency in the division of the law is attainable only if we are prepared to disregard the requirements of practical convenience. Greater weight is wisely attributed to the fact that treason and robbery are both crimes, than to the fact that the one is an offence against the state and the other an offence against an individual. ”

“ So, also, the law, which is intended to prevent crime, in its general spread among the community, by regulations, police organization, and otherwise, which are adapted for the protection of the lives and property of citizens, for the dispersion of mobs, for the arrest of thieves and assassins, for the watch which is kept over the community, as well as over this class of people, is more efficient than punishment of crimes after they have been committed. ”