User:Miztersmiley/Attainder
ATTAINDER is:... Here's the clearest and MOST ACCURATE definition found to date; In Wallach v. Van RiswickItalic text, 92 U.S. 202, 211 (1875) attainder has been simply and clearly defined: “It was in Lord Lovel's Case, Plowd. 488, where it was said by Harper, Justice, 'The act [of attainder] is no more than an instrument of conveyance, when by it the possessions of one man are transferred over to another.'
ATTAINDER IS MORE THAN JUST 'real" PROPERTY BEING STOLEN AGAINST YOUR NATURAL RIGHTS, AS YOUR CHILDREN ARE "POSSESSIONS" OF YOURS! AND FAR MORE PRECIOUS THAN ANY PROPERTY RIGHTS YOU HAVE!
“ On 10 Dec. both houses petitioned the king [Henry VII] to fulfil his promise to marry the Princess Elizabeth, which he accordingly did on 18 Jan. 1486. In March he left London without his queen on a progress through the eastern counties to York, where he was received with acclamations ; but he was warned of danger on the road, and was nearly captured in York itself by a conspiracy of Lord Lovell and Humphrey and Thomas Stafford, who since the battle of Bosworth had lived in sanctuary at Colchester. Lord Lovell escaped to Lancashire, Humphrey Stafford was hanged at Tyburn, and his younger brother Thomas was pardoned.
[ …] “He[nry VII] arrived in London 8 Nov. 1487, and was received like a conqueror. Parliament met on the 9th, and the queen was crowned on the 25th with great splendour at Westminster. This parliament, besides taking measures for the repression of crime and punishment of rebellion, may almost be said to have instituted the court of Starchamber.” Dictionary of National BiographyItalic text, edited by Sir Leslie Stephen, Sir Sidney Lee, Vol. 26, p. 71-72, Smith, Elder, & co., (1891)
This definition in Lord Lovel's case is the clearest of all that makes crystal sense in British law, and is markedly equal in understanding, to some degree, level, or extent to what was also further possible to occur in the British legal complexity of legal understanding of the laws, which invariably automatically attached the ‘corruption of blood’Italic text once the stain, blot, attaint, attainder, was applied to any man to whom was made “automatically” “found” to exist “guilty,” made final in completion of action in any agency of government wielding such abusive power, the sentence attached prevented any progeny in the “family-tree” down-line (descendants) or ancestors in the family-tree” up-line (ascendants/ancestors) from inherited the “corrupted” real property , due to the possibility of themselves, in their own persons,"becoming made" and "conveyed" into existing as actual physical “possessions” and due to counting the children, servants and slaves of the “attainted” victim of attainder, all other living “possessions” human were “controverted” into “chattels”Italic text as kingdom “slaves,” therefore, once “controverted” into a "chattel" the existed on two category classes: (1) “real” property and (2) “personal” “property,” and "if" such notion was selected or elected as a cruel and unusual punishment excessive by the government, Parliament, King's Bench, Privy Council, for a tortured life of as an abused “possession” of the crown to dispense as seen fit to prejudices applied by individuals in control of governmental flowing power from Parliament or the flowing power extending or "stretching" the Royal Prerogative of the monarch, whether it be King (such as Henry VII, VIII, King James I, Edward III, etc.)or even Queen (such as Mary, Elizabeth I, Anne I, etc.) each ruling as from the “Throne of God," and any and every person as a poor person surviving the one "attainted" could become an empty and poor heir "legally" transformed from a free person into a 'personal possession' as a slave or Sir William Blackstone's definition of Personal "chattel."
“Forfeiture” was frequently another "legal" jargon or terminology word of the British period used and exchanged synonymously with the regular understanding of the very nature in the actual practice and use of the word “attainder” in British law and special customs of executed “legal practice”, as the eloquent Judge William Blackstone cautiously described (not to spoil his chartered liberties granted him to compose the CommentariesItalic text ) “chattel” as property “real” or property (of possessions) “personal” in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book II: THE RIGHTS OF THINGS, Chapter 32: ALIENATION BY SPECIAL CUSTOMItalic text, explained more at length in Chapter 24: OF THINGS PERSONALItalic text
Trials, or absolute absence thereof, did not change or alter what the instrument of attainder in any way, nor does it as legislated obscurely into such an state act of attainder passed. The actual trials by bill of attainder were not always a trial before the legislature as suggested in plain error by the mistaken and heavily divided Supreme Court in U.S. v. Brown, 381 U.S. 437 (1965) Id. at 332, or in Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 US 425, 471, footnote 32 (1977); citing Lovett.
NIXON WAS LIED TO by the U.S. Supreme Court AND SO WERE WE, AND STILL MORE SO TODAY!
Clearly, Sir Walter Raleigh's attainder trial in 1603 was never before a court of Parliament (legislature) showing our U.S. Supreme Court in error and avoiding the true issue of attainder deliberately. Not always were attainders executed by legislated Parliamentary laws either. Compare: Raleigh, biography by Edmund Gosse, M.A., Lecturer at Trinity College Cambridge p. 143-157(1886).(a Google Online Book)Footnote 1
To aid the better overall comprehension in studying, especially to know how rights are protected by our common law in our U.S. Constitution, ignored by the U.S. Supreme Court with that crap notion of only a trial being had by legislature like Parliament, read these interesting tidbits and discover the lies and misbehavior at the federal bench.
QUICK STUDY AIDS: United States v. Lee, Kaufman v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196, 220 (1882)(actual corruption of blood following actual attainder); The American Journal of Legal History, CERTIORARI AND POLICY MAKING IN ENGLISH HISTORY, Jerome J. Hanus Vol. 12 no.2 p.81-94 Temple University (1968)(ONLINE); Judge (Sir) William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. I.-IV. (1765-69)(ONLINE); More than chattel: Black women and slavery in the Americas, David Barry Gaspar, Darlene Clark Hine (1996) edited (ISBN 0253330173 ) Indiana University Press (Bloomington); Chattel slavery and wage slavery: The Anglo-American context, 1830-1860, Marcus Cunliffe, (1979) (ISBN 0820304719 ) University of Georgia Press (Athens)
Footnote 1 “The jury was well packed with adverse names. The precept is signed by Raleigh's old and bitter enemy, Lord Howard of Bindon, now Earl of Suffolk. The trial, probably on account of the terror caused by the ravages of the plague, was adjourned for nearly two months, which Raleigh spent in the Tower. Almost the only remnant of all his great wealth which was not by this time forfeited, was his cluster of estates at Sherborne. He attempted to tie these up to his son, and his brother, Adrian Gilbert, and Cecil appears to have been a friend to Lady Raleigh in this matter. It was so generally taken for granted that Raleigh would be condemned, that no mock modesty prevented the King's Scotch favourites from asking for his estates. In October Cecil informed Sir James Elphinstone that he was at least the twelfth person who had already applied for the[Pg 144] gift of Sherborne. Fortunately Raleigh, as late as the summer of 1602, had desired the judge, Sir John Doddridge, to draw up a conveyance of Sherborne to his son, and then to his brother, with a rent-charge of 200l. a year for life to Lady Raleigh. For the present Cecil firmly refused to allow anyone to tamper with this conveyance, and Sherborne was the raft upon which the Raleighs sailed through the worst tempest of the trial. Cecil undoubtedly retained a certain tenderness towards his old friend Lady Raleigh, and for her sake, rather than her husband's, he extended a sort of protection to them in their misfortune. She appealed to him in touching language to 'pity the name of your ancient friend on his poor little creature, which may live to honour you, that we may all lift up our hands and hearts in prayer for you and yours. If you truly knew, you would pity your poor unfortunate friend, which relieth wholly on your honourable and wonted favour.' Cecil listened, and almost relented. “p. 143-144 On November 5, Sir W. Waad was instructed to bring Raleigh out of the Tower, and prepare him for his trial. As has been said, the plague was in London, and the prisoner was therefore taken down to Winchester, to be tried in Wolvesey Castle. So terrible was the popular hatred of Raleigh, that the conveyance of him was attended with difficulty, and had to be constantly delayed. 'It was hob or nob whether he should have been brought alive through such multitudes of unruly people as did exclaim against him;' and to escape Lynch law a whole week had to be given to the transit. 'The fury and tumult of the people[Pg 146] was so great' that Waad had to set watches, and hasten his prisoner by a stage at a time, when the mob was not expecting him. The wretched people seemed to forget all about the plague for the moment, so eager were they to tear Raleigh to pieces. When he had reached Winchester, it was thought well to wait five days more, to give the popular fury time to quiet down a little. A Court of King's Bench was fitted up in the castle, an old Episcopal palace, not well suited for that purpose.
“On Thursday, November 17, 1603, Raleigh's trial began. In the centre of the upper part of the court, under a canopy of brocade, sat the Lord Chief Justice of England, Popham, and on either side of him, as special commissioners, Cecil, Waad, the Earls of Suffolk and Devonshire, with the judges, Anderson, Gawdy, and Warburton, and other persons of distinction. Opposite Popham sat the Attorney-General, Sir Edward Coke, who conducted the trial. It was actually opened, however, by Hale, the Serjeant, who attempted, as soon as Raleigh had pleaded 'not guilty' to the indictment, to raise an unseemly laugh by saying that Lady Arabella 'hath no more title to the Crown than I have, which, before God, I utterly renounce.' Raleigh was noticed to smile at this, and we can imagine that his irony would be roused by such buffoonery on an occasion so serious. There was no more jesting of this kind, but the whole trial has remained a type of what was uncouth and undesirable in the conduct of criminal trials through the beginning of the seventeenth century. The nation so rapidly increased in sensitiveness and in a perception of legal decency, that one of the very judges who con[Pg 147]ducted Raleigh's trial, Gawdy, lived to look back upon it with horror, and to say, when he himself lay upon his death-bed, that such a mode of procedure 'injured and degraded the justice of England.'
When Hale had ceased his fooling, Coke began in earnest. He was a man a little older than Raleigh, and of a conceited and violent nature, owing not a little of his exaggerated reputation to the dread that he inspired. He was never more rude and brutal than in his treatment of Sir Walter Raleigh upon this famous occasion, and even in a court packed with enemies, in which the proud poet and navigator might glance round without meeting one look more friendly than that in the cold eyes of Cecil, the needless insolence of Coke went too far, and caused a revulsion in Raleigh's favour. Coke began by praising the clemency of the King, who had forbidden the use of torture, and proceeded to charge Sir Walter Raleigh with what he called 'treason of the Main,' to distinguish it from that of George Brooke and his fellows, which was 'of the Bye.' He described this latter, and tried to point out that the former was closely cognate to it. In order to mask the difficulty, nay, the impossibility, of doing this successfully on the evidence which he possessed, he wandered off into a long and wordy disquisition on treasonable plots in general, ending abruptly with that of Edmund de la Pole. Then, for the first time, Coke faced the chief difficulty of the Government, namely, that there was but one witness against Raleigh. He did not allow, as indeed he could not be expected to do, that Cobham had shifted like a Reuben, and was now adhering, for the moment, to an eighth several confession of what he and[Pg 148] Raleigh had actually done or meant to do. It was enough for Coke to insist that Cobham's evidence, that is to say, whichever of the eight conflicting statements suited the prosecution best, was as valuable, in a case of this kind, as 'the inquest of twelve.” men.' Id. at Pp.146-148 Having thus, as he thought, shut Raleigh's mouth with regard to this one great difficulty, he continued to declaim against 'those traitors,' obstinately persisting in mixing up Raleigh's 'Main' with the 'Bye,' in spite of the distinction which he himself had drawn. Raleigh appealed against this once or twice, and at last showed signs of impatience. Coke then suddenly turned upon him, and cried out, 'To whom, Sir Walter, did you bear malice? To the royal children?' In the altercation that followed, Coke lost his temper in earnest, and allowed himself to call Raleigh 'a monster with an English face, but a Spanish heart.' He then proceeded to state what the accusation of Sir Walter really amounted to, and in the midst of the inexplicable chaos of this whole affair it may be well to stand for a moment on this scrap of solid ground. Coke's words were: You would have stirred England and Scotland both. You incited the Lord Cobham, as soon as Count Aremberg came into England, to go to him. The night he went, you supped with the Lord Cobham, and he brought you after supper to Durham House; and then the same night by a back-way went with La Renzi to Count Aremberg, and got from him a promise for the money. After this it was arranged that the Lord Cobham should go to Spain and return by Jersey, where you were to meet him about the distribution of the money; because Cobham had not so much policy or wickedness as you. Your intent was to set up the Lady Arabella as[Pg 149] a titular Queen, and to depose our present rightful King, the lineal descendant of Edward IV. You pretend that this money was to forward the Peace with Spain. Your jargon was 'peace,' which meant Spanish invasion and Scottish subversion. This was plain language, at least; this was the case for the prosecution, stripped of all pedantic juggling; and Raleigh now drew himself together to confute these charges as best he might. 'Let me answer,' he said; 'it concerns my life;' and from this point onwards, as Mr. Edwards remarks, the trial becomes a long and impassioned dialogue. Coke refused to let Raleigh speak, and in this was supported by Popham, a very old man, who owed his position in that court more to his age than his talents, and who was solicitous to be on friendly terms with the Attorney. Coke then proceeded to argue that Raleigh's relations with Cobham had been notoriously so intimate that there was nothing surprising or improbable in the accusation that he shared his guilt. He then nimbly went on to expatiate with regard to the circumstances of Cobham's treason, and was deft enough to bring these forward in such a way as to leave on the mind of his hearers the impression that these were things proved against Raleigh. To this practice, which deserved the very phrases which Coke used against the prisoner's dealings, 'devilish and machiavelian policy,' Raleigh protested again and again that he ought not to be subjected, until Coke lost his temper once more, and cried, 'I thou thee, thou traitor, and I will prove thee the rankest traitor in all England.' A sort of hubbub now ensued, and the Lord Chief Justice[Pg 150] again interfered to silence Raleigh, with a poor show of impartiality. After a futile discussion as to the value of Cobham's evidence, the foreman of the jury asked a plain question: 'I desire to understand the time of Sir Walter Raleigh's first letter, and of the Lord Cobham's accusation.' Upon this Cecil spoke for the first time, spinning out a[Pg 153] long and completely unintelligible sentence which was to serve the foreman as an answer. Before the jury could recover from their bewilderment, this extraordinary trial, which proceeded like an Adventure in Wonderland, was begun once more by Coke, who started afresh with voluble denunciation of the defendant, for whom, he said, it would have been better 'to have stayed in Guiana than to be so well acquainted with the state of Spain.' Coke was still pouring out a torrent of mere abuse, when Raleigh suddenly interrupted him, and addressing the judges, claimed that Cobham should then and there be brought face to face with him. Since he had been in the Tower he had been studying the law, and he brought forward statutes of Edwards III. and IV. to support his contention that he could not be convicted on Cobham's bare accusation. The long speech he made at this point was a masterpiece of persuasive eloquence, and it is worth noting that Dudley Carleton, who was in court, wrote to a friend that though when the trial began he would have gone a hundred miles to see Raleigh hanged, when it had reached this stage he would have gone a thousand to save his life. “Raleigh had defended himself with great courage and intelligence, and the crowd in court were by no means in sympathy with the brutal and violent address in which Popham gave judgment. On the very day on which Raleigh was condemned, there began that reaction in his favour which has been proceeding ever since. When the Lord Chief Justice called the noble prisoner a traitor and an atheist, the bystanders, who after all were Englishmen, though they had met prepared to tear Raleigh limb from limb [hated as a ‘wine tax collector’ under Queen Elizabeth I, p. 131], could bear it no longer, and they hissed the judge, as a little before they had hooted Coke. To complete the strangeness of this strange trial, when sentence had been passed, Raleigh advanced quickly up the court, unprevented, and spoke to Cecil and one or two other commissioners, asking, as a favour, that the King would permit Cobham to die first. Before he was secured by the officers, he had found time for this last protest: 'Cobham is a false and cowardly accuser. He can face neither me [Raleigh denied the right to face his accuser] nor death without acknowledging his falsehood.' He was then led away to gaol.” Id. at p. 157
IN RE OLIVER , 333 U.S. 257 269-271 (1948) : The traditional Anglo-American distrust for secret trials has been variously ascribed to the notorious use of this practice by the Spanish Inquisition, 21 to the excesses of the English Court of Star Chamber,22 and to the French monarchy's abuse of the lettre de cachet. 23 All of these institutions obviously symbolized a menace to liberty. In the hands of despotic groups each of them had become an instrument for the suppression of political and religious heresies in ruthless disregard of the right of an accused to a fair trial. Whatever other benefits the guarantee to an accused that his trial be conducted in public may confer upon our society,24 the guarantee has always been recognized as a safeguard against any attempt to employ our courts as instruments of persecution. The knowledge that every criminal trial is subject to contemporaneous review in the forum of public opinion is an effective restraint on possible abuse of judicial power. 25 One need not wholly agree with a statement made on the subject by Jeremy Bentham over 120 years ago to appreciate the fear of secret trials felt by him, his predecessors and contemporaries. Bentham said: '* * * suppose the proceedings to be completely secret, and the court, on the occasion, to consist of no more than a single judge,-that judge will be at once indolent and arbitrary: how corrupt soever his inclination may be, it will find no check, at any rate no tolerably efficient check, to oppose it. Without publicity, all other checks are insufficient: in comparison of publicity, all other checks are of small account. Recordation, appeal, whatever other institutions might present themselves in the character of checks, would be found to operate rather as cloaks than checks; as cloaks in reality, as checks only in appearance.' 26
[ Footnote 21 ] Radin, The Right to a Public Trial, 6 Temp.L.Q. 381, 389. The criminal procedure of the civil law countries long resembled that of the Inquisition in that the preliminary examination of the accused, the questioning of witnesses, and the trial of the accused were conducted in secret. Esmein, A History of Continental Criminal Procedure 183,382 (1913); Ploscowe, Development of Inquisitorial and Accusatorial Elements in French Procedure, 23 J.Crim.L. & Criminology 372,386. The ecclesiastical courts of Great Britain, which intermittently exercised a limited civil and criminal jurisdiction, adopted a procedure described as 'in name as well as in fact an Inquisition, differing from the Spanish Inquisition in the circumstances that it did not at any time as far as we are aware employ torture, and that the bulk of the business of the courts was of a comparatively unimportant kind * * *.' 2 Stephen, History of the Criminal Law of England 402 (1883). The secrecy of the ecclesiastical courts and the civil law courts was often pointed out by commentators who praised the publicity of the common law courts. See e.g., 3 Blackstone, Commentaries * 373; 1 Bentham Rationale of Judicial Evidence, 594,595, 603 (1827). The English common law courts which succeeded to the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts have renounced all claim to hold secret sessions in cases formerly within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, even in civil suits. See, e.g., Scott v. Scott, (1913) A.C. 417. [ Footnote 22 ] Davis v. United States, 8 Cir., 247 F. 394, 395, L.R.A.1918C, 1164; Keddington v. State, 19 Ariz. 457, 459, 172 P. 273, L.R.A.1918D, 1093; Williamson v. Lacy, 86 Me. 80, 82, 83, 29 A. 943, 944, 25 L.R.A. 506; Dutton v. State, 123 Md. 373, 387, 91 A. 417, 422, Ann.Cas.1916C, 89; Jenks, The Book of English Law 91 (3d Ed.1932). Some authorities have said that trials in the Star Chamber were public, but that witnesses against the accused were examined privately with no opportunity for him to discredit them. Apparently all authorities agreed that the accused himself was grilled in secret, often tortured, in an effort to obtain a confession and that the most objectionable of the Star Chamber's practices was its asserted prerogative to disregard the common law rules of criminal procedure when the occasion demanded. Italic text5 Holdsworth, A History of English Law, 163, 165, 180,197 (2d Ed.1937); Radin, The Right to a Public Trial, 6 Temp.L.Q. 381, 386,388; Washburn, The Court of Star Chamber, 12 Am.L.Rev. 21, 25,31. [ Footnote 23 ] Radin, The Right to a Public Trial, 6 Temp.L.Q. 381, 388. The lettre de cachet was an order of the king that one of his subjects be forthwith imprisoned or exiled without a trial or an opportunity to defend himself. In the eighteenth century they were often issued in blank to local police. Louis XV is supposed to have issued more than 150,000 lettres de cachet during his reign. This device was the principal means employed to prosecute crimes of opinion, although it was also used by the royalty as a convenient method of preventing the public airing of intra- family scandals. Voltaire, Mirabeau and Montesquieu, among others denounced the use of the lettre de cachet, and it was abolished after the French Revolution, though later temporarily revived by Napoleon. 13 Encyc. Brit. 971; 3 Encyc. Soc. Sci, 137. [ Footnote 24 ] Other benefits attributed to publicity have been: (1) Public trials come to the attention of key witnesses unknown to the parties. These witnesses may then voluntarily come forward and give important testimony. 6 Wigmore, Evidence 1834 (3d Ed.,1940); Tanksley v. United States, 9 Cir., 145 F.2d 58, 59, 156 A.L.R. 257. (2) The spectators learn about their government and acquire confidence in their judicial remedies. 6 Wigmore, Evidence 1834 (3d Ed. 1940); 1 Bentham, Rationale of Judicial Evidence 525 (1827); State v. Keeler, 52 Mont. 205, 156 P. 1080, L.R.A.1916E, 472, Ann.Cas.1917E, 619; 20 Harv.L.Rev. 489. [ Footnote 25 ] Jenks, The Book of English Law 91 (1932); Auld, Comparative Jurisprudence of Criminal Process, 1 U. of Toronto L.J. 82, 99; Radin, The Right to a Public Trial, 6 Temp.L.Q. 381; Criminal Procedure in Scotland and England, 108 Edinburgh Rev. 174, 181,182; Holmes, J. in Cowley v. Pulsifer, 137 Mass. 392, 394, 50 Am.Rep. 318; State v. Osborne, 54 Or. 289, 295,297, 103 P. 62, 64,66, 20 Ann.Cas. 627. People v. Murray, 89 Mich. 276, 286, 50 N.W. 995, 998, 14 L.R.A. 809, 28 Am.St.Rep. 294: 'It is for the protection of all persons accused of crime the innocently accused that they may not become the victim of an unjust prosecution, as well as the guilty, that they may be awarded a fair trial that one rule (as to public trials) must be observed and applied to all.' Frequently quoted is the statement in 1 Cooley, Constitutional Limitations (8th Ed.1927) at 647: 'The requirement of a public trial is for the benefit of the accused; that the public may see he is fairly dealt with and not unjustly condemned, and that the presence of interested spectators may keep his triers keenly alive to a sense of their responsibility and to the importance of their functions * * *' [ Footnote 26 ] 1 Bentham, Rationale of Judicial Evidence 524 (1827).