Westmoreland v. United States/Opinion of the Court

by David Josiah Brewer

United States Supreme Court

155 U.S. 545

Westmoreland  v.  United States

It is not denied that the circuit court for the Eastern district of Texas has jurisdiction over offenses against the laws of the United States committed in that portion of the Indian Territory described in the indictment (25 Stat. 786, §§ 17, 18); but it is insisted that by section 2146, Rev. St., such jurisdiction does not 'extend to crimes committed by one Indian against the person or property of another Indian, nor to any Indian committing any offense in the Indian country who has been punished by the local law of the tribe, or to any case where, by treaty stipulations, the exclusive jurisdiction over such offenses is or may be secured to the Indian tribes respectively,' and that no indictment can be held sufficient which does not expressly negative the exceptions contained in this section. See, also, 26 Stat. 94, § 30; In re Mayfield, 141 U.S. 107, 11 Sup. Ct. 939. The defendant and the deceased are described as 'white persons, and not Indians, nor citizens of the Indian Territory.' The first clause in section 2146 is taken from the twenty-fifth section of the act of June 30, 1834 (4 Stat. 733), and it was held in U.S. v. Rogers, 4 How. 567, 573, that adoption into an Indian tribe did not bring the party thus adopted within the scope of such exception, the court saying: 'Whatever obligations the prisoner may have taken upon himself by becoming a Cherokee by adoption, his responsibility to the laws of the United States remained unchanged and undiminished. He was still a white man, of the white race, and therefore not within the exception in the act of congress.' The term 'Indian,' in section 2146, is one descriptive of race, and therefore the defendant, described as a white man, and not an Indian, is shown to be outside the first two clauses of section 2146.

But it is insisted that article 38 of the treaty with the Choctaws and Chickasaws, of April 28, 1866 (14 Stat. 779), provides that 'every white person who, having married a Choctaw or Chickasaw, resides in the said Choctaw or Chickasaw Nation, or who has been adopted by the legislative authorities, is to be deemed a member of said nation, and shall be subject to the laws of the Choctaw and Chickasaw Nations according to his domicile, and to prosecution and trial before their tribunals, and to punishment according to their laws in all respects as though he was a native Choctaw or Chickasaw'; and that, therefore, the indictment should also negative the conditions of this article. But it is charged that the defendant and the deceased were not 'citizens of the Indian Territory.' Force must be given to this term in the indictment, and, while it may be conceded that it is not the most apt to describe citizenship in an Indian tribe, yet it is not an unreasonable construction to hold that it refers to all citizenship which could possibly be acquired in the Indian Territory, including therein citizenship in any Indian tribe domiciled within such limits. At least, as no challenge was made of the indictment prior to the trial, and the question was only raised by motion in arrest, and as, further, that which was intended is obvious, it is fair to rule that any merely techinical defect in this language was cured by the verdict.

Again, it is objected that the indictment is insufficient in that it fails to allege that the defendant knew that that which he is charged to have administered to the deceased was a deadly poison, and also that the poison was taken into the stomach of the deceased. Neither of these objections is well taken. It is charged that he administered the strychnine and other poisons with the unlawful and felonious intent to take the life of the deceased, and that, so administered, they did have the effect of causing death. In matters not whether he knew the exact character of the strychnine or other poisons. It was murder if he unlawfully and feloniously administered any poison with the design of taking life, and that which he so administered did produce death. At the common law, though it was necessary to allege the kind of poison administered, nevertheless proof of the use of a different kind of poison was regarded as an immaterial variance. 'If A. be indicted for poisoning of B., it must allege the kind of poison; but, if he poisoned B. with another kind of poisoning, yet it maintains the indictment, for the kind of death is the same.' 2 Hale, P. C. 185; 2 Bish. Cr. Proc. §§ 514, 555. So, also, it is unnecessary to aver that the poison was taken into the stomach of the deceased. The crime would be complete if the poison was by hypodermic injection, or otherwise, introduced into the body of the deceased, and, affecting the heart or other organ, caused the death. The indictment need not specify in detail the mode in which the poison affected the body, or the particular organ upon which its operation was had. It is enough to charge that poison was administered, and that such poison, so administered, caused the death.

These are all the objections made to the indictment, and, as its sufficiency is the only question presented for consideration, it must be held that no error is apparent in the record, and the judgment is affirmed.

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