Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 8.djvu/251

UNITED STATES V. STONB. ���237 ���"that should be the end of it." He was induced to niake the settle- ment in the belief that he would have no more trouble in court or else- where about it. He was afraid Bennett might kill him. �The court overruled a motion to exclude the confessions ; a motion to compel the district attorney to elect on which of the counts of the indietment he would try the defendant, excluding the others; and a motion to instruet the jury to find a verdict for the defendant. After argument, the court, Hammond, D. J., charged the jury as follows upon the construction of the statute : �" The object of this statute, and others in the same chapter, is to protect all persons and property engaged in the commerce of the United States, or within the admiralty and maritime junsdiction of the United States, from all manner of spoliation and violence, or rapine and plunder. It is a matter peculiarly within the jurisdiction of the United States, and the necessity for such statutes is obvious. Whether such persons and propeity are likewise within the protection of the common or statutory laws of the several state's, against the same or analogous crimes, it is not necessary to inquire; but many of the offences found in this chapter, made for the protection of vessels and property pertaining to them, are unknown to the laws of this state, or to the general common law of England or America. The offence deflned in this section, like all others against the United States, is purely statutory, and we are not administering the common or' state statutory law of larceny, but a statute of the United States deflning the statutory crime of 'plundering, stealing, or destroying any mouey, goods, merchandise, or other eflects from or belonging to any vessel in distress, or wrecked, lost, stranded, or cast away upon the sea, or in any other place within the admiralty and maritime juris- diction of the United States.' There are two other offences declared in this same section, with which we now have no concem ; but the one contained in words I have quoted is a single and distinct offence, with which we are now dealing in the trial of this defendant. It is not, as bas been supposed in argument, and as bas been probably thought by the pleader who drew this indietment, a statute defining several offences, namely: One of plundering from a vessel wrecked or in distress ; another, of plundering goods belonging to a vessel so situated ; another, of stealing goods from such vessel ; another, of stealing goods belonging to her; and still others, of destroying goods either from or belonging to the vessel. The whole flrat clause of the section describes a single offence, and it might well have been so charged in the lan- guage of the statute, pure and simple ; the indietment containing, of course, the necessary jurisdictional averments as to the condition and location of the vessel. We are authorized to treat the indietment as if it had been so f ramed, and I charge you, therefore, that if the defendant bas either plundered, stolen, or destroyed the goods mentioned in this indietment from a vessel wrecked or in distress, in any place within the admiralty and maritime jurisdiction of the United States, he is guilty under this section, without reference to the separation of the allegations into the several counts as we flnd them in the indietment. Nor is it at all material whether the goods were taken from off the wreck itself , ��� �