Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/557

INTERSTATE CRIME AND EXTRADITION. 53/ rest upon entirely different principles* In the former the extradition depends upon treaty contract or stipulation, which rests upon good faith, and in respect to which the sovereign upon whom the demand is made can exercise discretion, as well as investigate the charge on which the surrender is demanded, there being no rule of comity under and by virtue of which independent nations are required or expected to withhold from fugitives within their jurisdiction the right of asylum. In the matter of interstate rendition, however, there is the binding force and obligation, not of contract, but of the supreme law of the land, which imposes no conditions or limitations upon the jurisdiction and authority of the State to which the fugitive is returned." It thus appears that the policy of interstate rendition as now settled contemplates that the States are not in any substantial sense independent sovereignties. The law^ of the demanding State alone determines whether a crime has been committed, and, once returned there, the prisoner may be tried for any other crime. Any person who has left a State after an offence against its laws may be surrendered, and the only immunity vouchsafed to the citizen against summary transportation to a distant forum is that he may require it to be shown that he had actually been within the demanding State and left it. This latter point seems to be settled in the citizen's favor. The language of the Constitution and statute indicates that actual fugitives alone and not constructive fugitives were contemplated. Furthermore there has been an authoritative interpretation to such effect. In Ex Parte Reggel ^ it was said : " The appellant was entitled, under the act of Congress, to insist upon proof that he was within the demanding State at the time he is alleged to have committed the crime charged, and subsequently withdrew from her jurisdiction, so that he could not be reached by her criminal process. The statute, it is to be observed, does not prescribe the character of such proof; but that the executive authority of the territory was not required by the Act of Congress to cause the arrest of appellant, and his delivery to the agent appointed by the governor of Pennsylvania, without proof of the fact that he was a fugitive from justice, is, in our judgment, clear from the language of that Act." I am inclined to concur in the opinion advanced by Mr. John Bassett Moore in his comprehensive and valuable work on extradition (section 590), which the learned 1 114U. S. 642.