414 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. soever" over the District, which constituted the police court, denied a jury in such proceedings. The Supreme Court of the District had sustained the vahdity of this statute, and refused to release the prisoner. This judgment was reversed by the Supreme Court of the United States on the sole ground that he had a consti- tutional right to a jury trial, and their reasons were thus stated : "There is nothing in the history of the Constitution or of the original amendments to justify the assertion that the people of this District may be lawfully deprived of the benefit of any one of the constitutional guar- antees of life, liberty, and property — especially of the privilege of trial by jury in criminal cases. In the Draft of a Constitution reported by the Committee of Five on the 6th of August, 1787, in the convention which framed the Constitution, the 4th section of article XI read that 'the trial of all criminal offences (except in cases of impeachment) shall be in the States where they shall be committed; and shall be by jury.' i Elliott's Deb., 2d ed., 229. But that article was, by unanimous vote, amended so as to read: 'The trial of all crimes (except in cases of impeachment) shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the State where the said crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, then the trial shall be at such place or places as the legislature may direct.' Id. 270. The object of thus amending the section, Mr. Madi- son says, was to '* provide for trial by jury of offences committed out of any State,' 3 Madison papers, 144. In Reynolds v. United States, 98 U. S. 145, 154, it was taken for granted that the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution secured to the people of the Territories the right of trial by jury in criminal prosecutions; and it had been previously held in Webster v. Reid, 11 How. 437, 460, that the Seventh Amendment secured to them a like right in civil actions at common law. We cannot think that the people of this District have, in that regard, less rights than those accorded to the people of the Territories of the United States." * If the views thus expressed are not overruled (and they were re- affirmed with equal positiveness during the last year ^) , they must lead to the conclusion that no conviction for crime could be had in any of our new possessions, after the establishment there of an orderly civil government, except upon a jury trial. I think also that by the ordinary rules of construction, the provisions of the third, fifth, and eighth Amendments must be regarded in any form of territorial government which Congress may construct for any part of the United States; including, of course,
- Callan v. Wilson, 127 U. S. 540, 550.
" Thompson v. Utah, 170 U. S. 343, 346.
