Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/560

540 540 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. It has been remarked that the rule that only actual fugitives are extraditable should be respected and administered in its widest and most literal scope. Usually courts and judges have fully car- ried out this policy, but exceptions occasionally occur. In the North Carolina- Tennessee case above referred to, the Supreme Court of North Carolina is entitled to great respect for firmly administering the law although the result was practically most outrageous. Duty constrained the court to decide first that per- sons firing a shot in North Carolina, which took effect across the boundary line in Tennessee, could not be prosecuted in North Carolina because the technical locus was where the act took effect, and a duty just as clear afterwards compelled them to refuse extra- dition of the malefactors to Tennessee because they had not been within that State. From this latter decision two members of the Supreme Court of North Carolina dissented, their argument be- ing that the theory of constructive presence of the murderers in Tennessee when the shot was fired from North Carolina must be consistently carried out, so that if they were constructively in Tennessee and had since actually been found in North Carolina they must have constructively fled from Tennessee and therefore be extraditable. This reasoning is fallacious because the extra- dition application was under Federal law, proceeding on general principles and independently of the State laws. These dissents illustrate the judicial spirit sometimes cropping out to insure the doing of justice in an exceptional case, law or no law. Occasionally in interstate rendition cases judges whose judicial ideals are beyond reproach fall short of effectuating the constitutional rights of the citizen through following State law. It must be constantly kept in mind that interstate rendition rests on Federal law, and that such rights as the citizen possesses are secured to him by the Federal Constitution. The Federal statutory provisions, however, are very meagre, and there has naturally grown up a large volume of State jurisprudence both statutory and case. At a meeting of delegates to an interstate extradition conference, appointed by the governors of several States, held in New York City in 1887, a proposed statute was formulated and recommended to be adopted by Congress. Such act is comprehensive in its terms, prescribing practice and procedure as well as matters of substantive law; it apparently embodies the result of careful study and sound judgment, and might well be passed in order to secure uniformity throughout the Union. But,