THE HABEAS CORPUS CASE EX PARTE JOHN MERRYMAN, CAMPBELL'S REPORTS, P. 246. — OPINION OF THE CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES.
| Ex parte JOHN MERRYMAN. | Before the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, at Chambers. |
The application in this case for a writ of habeas corpus is made to me under the fourteenth section of the Judiciary Act of 1789, which renders effectual for the citizen the constitutional privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. That act gives to the courts of the United States, as well as to each justice of the Supreme Court and to every district judge, power to grant writs of habeas corpus for the purpose of an inquiry into the cause of commitment. The petition was presented to me at Washington, under the impression that I would order the prisoner to be brought before me there; but as he was confined in Fort McHenry, in the city of Baltimore, which is in my circuit, I resolved to hear it in the latter city, as obedience to the writ under such circumstances would not withdraw General Cadwallader, who had him in charge, from the limits of his military command.
The petition presents the following case:
The petitioner resides in Maryland, in Baltimore County. While peaceably in his own house, with his family, it was, at two o'clock on the morning of the 25th of May, 1861, entered by an armed force professing to act under military orders. He was then compelled to rise from his bed, taken into custody and conveyed to Fort McHenry, where he is imprisoned by the commanding officer, without warrant from any lawful authority.
The commander of the fort, General George Cadwallader, by whom he is detained in confinement, in his return to the writ, does not deny any of the facts alleged in the petition. He states that the prisoner was arrested by order of General Keim, of Pennsylvania, and conducted as aforesaid to Fort McHenry by his order, and placed in his (General Cadwallader's) custody, to be there detained by him as a prisoner.
A copy of the warrant or order under which the prisoner was arrested was demanded by his counsel and refused. And it is not alleged in the return that any specific act, constituting any offense against the laws of the United States, has been charged against him upon oath; but he appears to have been arrested upon general charges of treason and rebellion, without proof, and without giving the names of the witnesses, or specifying the acts which, in the judgment of the military officer, constituted these crimes. Having the prisoner thus in custody upon these vague and unsupported accusations, he refuses to obey the writ of habeas corpus, upon the ground that he is duly authorized by the President to suspend it.
The case, then, is simply this: A military officer, residing in Pennsylvania, issues an order to arrest a citizen of Maryland upon vague and indefinite charges, without any proof, so far as appears. Under this order his house is entered in the night, he is seized as a prisoner and conveyed to Fort McHenry, and there kept in close confinement. And when a habeas corpus is served on the commanding officer, requiring him to produce the prisoner before a justice of the Supreme Court, in order that he may examine into the legality of the imprisonment, the answer of the officer is that he is authorized by the President to suspend the writ of habeas corpus at his discretion, and, in the exercise of that discretion, suspends it in this case, and on that ground refuses obedience to the writ.
As the case comes before me, therefore, I understand that the President not only claims the right to suspend the writ of habeas corpus himself at his discretion, but to delegate that discretionary power to a military officer, and to leave it to him to determine whether he will or will not obey judicial process that may be served upon him.
No official notice has been given to the courts of justice, or to the public, by proclamation or otherwise, that the President claimed this power, and had exercised it in the manner stated in the return. And I certainly listened to it with some surprise; for I had supposed it to be one of those points of constitutional law upon which there was no difference of opinion, and that it was admitted on all hands that the privilege of the writ could not be suspended except by act of Congress.