Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/694

 682 FEDERAL REPORTER. �offences are charged in this indictment, and those are the questions for you to examine. �Gentlemen, anything outside of the question as to whether the defendants, or sonie of them, are guiltyof conspiring and taking some measures to earry ont the objeet of the conspiraey, and of the issue as to whether there was any obstruction or resistance of the marshal in executing the writ, is irrelevant to this matter. There has been a large amount of testimony introduced here, gentlemen, simply as beariag upon the ques- tion of conspiracy and intent. When you get beyond that — beyond throwing any light upon those issues — you are to dis- card it. �Gentlemen, there was a judgment in favor of the Southern Pacific Eailroad Company against the two parties, Storer and Brewer, put in evidence, and a writ of execution issued upon that judgment. You have nothing whatever to do with the merits of that controversy. The law has appointed courts to settle such controversies. It does not allow the parties to determine their own cases. It provides a judiciary for the purpose of inquiring into and settling legal controversies. When this controversy between the Southern Pacifie Eailroad Company and Storer and Brewer was tried by the court and the judgment entered, that settled the matter for ail time, unless that judgment should in some form be set asiàe. The merits of the controversy, or as to whether there was any error in the judgment, is not a question for you to consider; it is not before you at ail. You are to presume it was settled cor- rectly until otherwise determined. At ail events it was so set- tled, whether correctly or erroneously does not matter for the purposes of this case. �There was but one way of lawfully preventing the execu- tion of that judgment when demanded by the plaintiff, and that was by an appeal to, the 3upreme .court of the United States, taken within the proper time, and in the mode pre- scribed by law. If no appeal is taken, and the judgment is not reversed, that judgment is just as binding, jusias final, as though it were a judgment of the supreme court of the United States. It settlea the rights of those parties for ail ����