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43 A.B.A. J. 415 (1957)
The Supreme Court and a Six-Gun: The Extraordinary Story of In re Neagle

handle is hein.journals/abaj43 and id is 415 raw text is: The Supreme Court and a Six-Gun: The Extraordinary Story of In re Neagle by Walker Lewis • of the Maryland Bar (Baltimore) Every now and then one runs across a I they could never be published as fiction-I Neagle was such a case, and it has all the six-shooters, a beautiful blonde heiress, a multimillionaire widower, and an Associat Court charged with murder. Mr. Lewis gi American history. The story is true. Not been changed. In re Neagle, 135 U. S. 1 (1890), is a landmark case, holding, among other things, that a federal officer cannot be prosecuted in a state court for acts done in the perform- arnce of his duties. Specifically, the case involved deputy United States Marshal David Neagle who had been assigned the duty of protecting Supreme Court Justice Stephen J. Field while traveling on circuit and who had killed David S. Terry in the act of assaulting Field. Neagle was charged with murder and was held for trial in the California courts but was released by the United States Circuit Court for California on a writ of habeas corpus. This was af- firmed by the United States Supreme Court.' Neagle's case was argued by Jo- seph H. Choate,2 one of our greatest lawyers, and the opinion was written by Samuel Freeman Miller, one of our greatest Supreme Court Justices. It has been cited almost 200 times. Notwithstanding all this, the case it- egal case whose facts are so bizarre that owned the Grand Hotel, connected the story would be too improbable. In re to the Palace by a bridge. His wife features of a Wild West movie: blazing had died in 1875, leaving him with tall, bowie-knife-toting frontiersman, a three children and an amorous dis- Ie Justice of the United States Supreme position, which United States Dis- te ustceof he nied tats uprme trict judge Matthew P. Deady was ies a spirited account of this chapter in trt dg e ahe w a later to describe as follows: even the names of the characters have In his comipositlion there appears to be a vein of sentiment and love of pleasure that has led him into illicit self is less extraordinary than the relations with the other sex, and given background which produced it. him the reputation of a libertine. The principal characters, in the Sarah Althea Hill, a golden-haired order of their appearance, were as beauty with sparkling blue eyes. follows: Born in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, William Shiron, United States she was orphaned at an early age Senator from Nevada from 1875 to and inherited $20,000 from her par- 1881. He was born in Smithfield, ents. After attending a convent, she Ohio, on January 9, 1821, went west came to California with relatives during the gold rush, prospered in and Judge Deady described her in mining and other ventures, and was 1885 as an attractive woman of reputed to be worth some fifteen about 32 years of age. Judge Deady, million dollars. In 1880, when our however, was from Oregon and not story begins, he was 59 years old and given to superlatives; a Californian lived in San Francisco at the Palace might well have said more. In ad- Hotel,3 which le owned. He also dition to her stunning good looks, 1. The real issue was whether Neagle was The Supreme Court divided on the issue, dis- being held for an act done in pursuance of a sents being registered by Chief Justice Fuller law of the United States. Otherwise the fed- and Justice Lamar. Justice Field did not sit eral courts had no habeas corpus jurisdiction in the case. in the case. The Court upheld its jurisdiction 2. Other counsel, also notable, were W. H. nutwithstanding the absence of any statutory H. Miller, United States Attorney General, law authorizing federal officers to furnish pro- G. A. Johnson, California Attorney General, tection to a traveling judge. Professor Wil- James C. Carter, Zachariah Montgomery, Sam- loughby, in PIICIPLES OF CONSTITUTIONAL LAW uel Shellabarger and Jeremiah M. Wilson. The (2d Ed., 1930), page 619, says that the court brief filed by Mr. Montgomery is particularly came perilously near to holding, If in fact it readable and moving. He was a personal friend did not actually hold, that the President has of Terry and, like him, an ardent believer in inherent executive power; that is, powers in- states' rights. herent in him as Chief Executive, and not as 2. At the time reputed to be the largest, expressly given him by the Constitution, or most costly, and most commodious hotel in the implied from the powers expressly given, or world. John S. Hittel, HISTORY OF SAN FRAN- constitutionally granted to him by Congress. cisco (1878), page 450. May, 1957 • Vol. 43 415

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