Deming v. McClaughry

Citations

• 113 F. 639
• 51 C.C.A. 349
• 1902 U.S. App. LEXIS 3983

Syllabus

<p>1. Court-Martial — Regular Officers Incompetent to Try Volunteers.</p> <p>Officers of the regular army are incompetent, under the seventy-seventh article of war, to try the officers or soldiers of the volunteer forces raised under the acts of April 22, 1898, and March 2, 1893 (30 Stat 361, c. 187; Id. 977, c. 352).</p> <p>2, Writ of Habeas Corpus — Function.</p> <p>The writ of habeas corpus is not available to review an erroneous judgment of a court having jurisdiction. But it is effective to challenge a judgment rendered by a court without jurisdiction, and to relieve the defendant from its effect.</p> <p>& Court-Martial — Jurisdiction—Indispensable Conditions.</p> <p>A court-martial is a court of inferior and limited jurisdiction. Proof (1) that it was convened by an officer empowered by the statutes to call it; (2) that the officers whom he commanded to sit upon it were of those whom he was authorized to detail for that purpose; (3) that the court thus constituted was vested with power to try the person and the offense charged; and (4) that its sentence was in conformity to the statutes,— is indispensable to its jurisdiction and to the validity of its judgment or sentence.</p> <p>4. Same — Judgment against a Volunteer by a Court-Martial of Regular Officers without Jurisdiction and Void.</p> <p>No officer is authorized, but every officer is forbidden, to constitute of officers of the regular army a court-martial to try a volunteer, and the judgment of such a court-martial against a volunteer is without jurisdiction and void.</p> <p>■5. Construction of Statutes — Opinions op Officers of Other Departments.</p> <p>The opinions of officers of other departments of the government relative to the construction and effect of statutes intrusted to them to enforce deserve serious consideration, and may well lead the way to decisions where the statutes are ambiguous and their meaning doubtful. But it is a duty of the courts, which they may not renounce, to interpret legisl