Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/58

 46 FEDBBAIi BEPOBTEB. ^ �go to the extent of deciding that a state officer wlio wllfully and oorruptly violates a law of congress, passed for any of the coinstitutional purposea which have been indieated, is, qiM state officer, clotbed with impunity for his crime, and exempted from punishment. The laws of the United Statea operate upon individuals without any reference in general to their relations to the state, The accident of their being state officers does not in general affect their liability as citizens to the ordinary process and jurisdiction of the courts of the United States, and, as before said, if they commit crimes against the United States they are punishable for such crimes. �Now, in the present case, a law is charged to have been violated wbich is necessary and proper to securing the effi- cient administration of their functions by the courts of the United States. There could be no proper administration of justice if the strong and influential were at liberty to arrest, imprison, and otherwise intimidate the weak and timid, and detain them from attendance as witnesses before the United States courts. Congress has constitutional power to pass laws proper for preventing the commission of this offence, and the plea and demurrer of the defendant virtually admits that he would be amenable to these laws but for the fact that be, in the acts complained of, was acting in the judicial capacity of a justice of the peace of the state of Virginia. So that the only question for consideration is whether a jus- tice of the peace of a state may, in the exercise of his office, wilfully and corruptly violate a law of the United States. If this indictment merely charged the defendant with an erro- neous judgment it could not be sustained, for errors committed even by so humble a judicial officer as a justice of the peace cannot be reviewed, corrected, or punished by indictment in any courti but must go up to an appellate court for correction on appeal or writ of error. But this indictment charges a wilful and corrupt motive and action on the part of this jus- tice : charges an offence which is especially made punishable by a constitutional law of congress passed in 1831. �That justices of the peace and ail judicial officers are pun- ����