Conmonwealth v. Steele

Citations

• 78 Pa. Super. 352

Syllabus

<p>Extradition — Constitutional law — Sufficiency of warrant.</p> <p>Under the Act of Congress of February 12, 1793, Rev. Stat. 1022, passed in furtherance of section 2, article IV, of the Constitution of the United States, relating to extraditions, it is requisite that the record disclose that a demand by the executive has been made for the party in custody as a fugitive from justice, that the demand is accompanied by a copy of an indictment or affidavit charging him with having committed a crime within the demanding state; that the copy of such indictment or affidavit was certified as authentic by the governor of the state making the demand; and that the person demanded is a fugitive from justice.</p> <p>Where the governor of the asylum state, in extradition proceedings, has ascertained the existence of facts specified in the statute, and issued his warrant for the delivery of the alleged fugitive, the latter may still sue out a writ of habeas corpus in the proper court to test the validity of the proceeding.</p> <p>Where a defendant was convicted in Ohio and sentence was suspended and he escaped into Pennsylvania and extradition was resisted on the ground that the relator committed an offense indictable there in 1917, but not indictable in Pennsylvania until made so by the Act of 1919, the court properly sustained the validity of the extradition where it appeared that the offense committed was a misdemeanor under the Act of March 13, 1903, P. L. 26.</p>