Case of Appleton Oaksmith. CASE OF APPLETON OAKSMITH. The warrant of a Judge of a Circuit Court of the United States will run throughout the United States. ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE, December 10, 1864. SIR In your letter of this date you ask how the request. contained in District Attorney Dana's letter to you of the 6th instant, relative to the arrest of Appleton Oaksmith, may be lawfully complied with? I am of opinion that either judge of the circuit court of the United States for the district of Massachusetts has authority, under the act of September 24, 1789, sec. 33, (1 Stats., 91,) to issue a warrant for the arrest of Oaksmith; and that under such a warrant he may be lawfully arrested anywhere in the United States. Attorney General Taney said that the power to arrest, conferred by the act of 1789, for any offence against the United States is given in general terms; and, so far as respects a judge or justice of the United States, it is not even confined to his district or circuit, but his warrant would run anywhere throughout the United States. (2 Opin., 564.) There is another procedure, however, that may be resorted to under the statute with a view to the same end, which it may be well, perhaps, to mention in this connection. Any justice of the peace, or other local magistrate at New Orleans, as well as any United States commissioner, if there be one there, has jurisdiction under the act of 1789 to arrest Oaksmith and commit him to answer the demands of the court before whom he was convicted; and on such commitment being made, it will be the statutory duty of the United States district judge at New Orleans "seasonably to issue, and of the marshal of the same district to execute, a warrant for the removal of the offender" to Boston. Inasmuch, however, as under the opinion of the late Case of Appleton Oaksmith. Chief Justice, the authority for Oaksmith's arrest at New Orleans, upon a warrant issued either by Judge Clifford or Judge Sprague, at Boston, is perfectly clear, I should suppose the Government would have no difficulty in adopting that course, and applying at once to one or the other of those judges for the necessary process. I am, sir, very respectfully, Your obedient servant, Hon. Wм. H. SEWARD, J. HUBLEY ASHTON, OPINIONS OF HON. JAMES SPEED OF KENTUCKY, APPOINTED DECEMBER 2, 1864. ACCOUNTS OF UNITED STATES MARSHALS. 1. The Secretary of the Interior has no power, without authority of law, to reopen the accounts of a Marshal, which have been adjusted by the accounting officers of the Treasury. 2. The President has no power to direct the accounting officers to reopen such accounts after the Secretary of the Interior has refused an application by the Marshal for the reopening of them. 3. The Secretary of the Interior is invested by law with exclusive supervisory power over the accounts of United States Marshals, and his decision of questions connected with the settlement of such accounts is the law of such settlement for the Executive Department of the Government. ATTORNEY GENERAL'S OFFICE, SIR: I have the honor to say that I have given very careful consideration to the questions upon which you have asked my opinion, at the instance of Hon. Thomas Corwin, attorney for W. Selden, Esq., late marshal of the District of Columbia, in connection with the papers referred to me with Mr. Corwin's communication. The facts of his case, as they are disclosed by the papers referred to me, appear to be briefly these: Mr. Selden was the marshal of the District of Columbia from the early part of 1858 to April 11, 1861. For as many as forty years before this gentleman went into office the marshal of the United States for this District, as it is stated, had been allowed by the accounting officers of the Treasury thirty-four cents per day, as his legal compensa vol. xi.-9 Accounts of United States Marshals. tion, for keeping and subsisting prisoners confined in the jail of the District of Columbia on criminal charges. When Mr. Selden went into office the then Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Jacob Thompson, changed the rule and rate of compensation with respect to those particular services. He decided that by force of the act of Congress of March 3, 1807, (2 Stats., 430,) the old Maryland statute of December 30, 1779, (1 Kilty & Dorsey, 149,) governed the compensation in question, and that the marshal was entitled to receive, by authority of these laws, only the sum of twenty-one cents and a fraction per day for keeping and subsisting persons confined on criminal charges in the jail of the District of Columbia. Under this ruling of the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Selden's accounts for the services specified were settled and adjusted at the Treasury during the whole period of time, I am informed, in which he held the office of marshal, and the moneys to which he was entitled, on the principle adopted by the Secretary of the Interior for the services specified, were received by him from the United States. In other words, Mr. Selden's accounts for the services in question, presented during his incumbency of the office of marshal, have been in the regular way settled, adjusted, and closed, on the basis of compensation mentioned, by the proper accounting officers of the Treasury. He retired from office in April, 1861, Mr. Lamon, the present marshal, having been appointed to succeed him. In the month of October last Mr. Corwin, as attorney for Mr. Selden, addressed a letter to the Secretary of the Interior requesting him to direct a readjustment of the accounts of Mr. Selden for the maintenance of prisoners during the time he held the office, and to allow him the sum which might be ascertained to be due him between the allowance made to him of twenty-one cents per day, and that which his predecessors had received, viz, thirtyfour cents per day for each prisoner. The present Secretary of the Interior, as Mr. Corwin Accounts of United States Marshals. states, declines to take any action in the premises; in other words, refuses to make an order for the readjustment of Mr. Selden's accounts on the proposed basis. Under these circumstances Mr. Corwin requested you to take my opinion on the two questions stated in his communication. Before giving my opinion on these questions, I deem it proper to direct your attention to two preliminary points, which you will probably think deserve consideration in connection with this application. The first is, whether the Secretary of the Interior was not right in his determination not to direct a readjustment of these closed accounts of Mr. Selden? I am clearly of opinion that he was, because, in my judgment, he possesses no power to comply with that gentleman's request. The act of March 3, 1845, sec. 4, (5 Stats., 764,) distinctly provides, that "no accounts which shall have been adjusted by the accounting officers of the Treasury shall be reopened without authority of law." The only cases in which adjusted accounts are capable of being reopened are those mentioned in the proviso to this section of the act of 1845, namely, "cases where special acts have passed, or shall pass, for the relief of individuals." The present case, of course, is not embraced by the exception to the rule of the act of 1845.* I can imagine cases in which a question might well be made, as to when accounts may be said to have been adjusted, or as to what particular accounts, under certain circumstances, have or have not been adjusted within the meaning of the act; but in the present instance no such question can arise. Mr. Selden's accounts have been, in the strongest sense, "adjusted." They were settled and closed during the official term of a previous administration, under the direction of another head of the Depart *This act was repealed by the act of August 10, 1846, sec. 5, (9 Stats., 97,) but as the repealing provision occurs in the body of a civil appropriation act, it probably escaped the attention of the Attorney General, as it did that of Attorney General Bates. (10 Opin., 232, 255.) |