Southern Surety Co. v. Oklahoma

241 U.S. 582, 36 S. Ct. 692, 60 L. Ed. 1187, 1916 U.S. LEXIS 1682
CourtSupreme Court of the United States
DecidedJune 12, 1916
Docket124
StatusPublished
Cited by19 cases

This text of 241 U.S. 582 (Southern Surety Co. v. Oklahoma) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of the United States primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Southern Surety Co. v. Oklahoma, 241 U.S. 582, 36 S. Ct. 692, 60 L. Ed. 1187, 1916 U.S. LEXIS 1682 (1916).

Opinion

Mb. Justice Van Devantek

delivered the opinion of the court.

This is an action on a bail bond given by an accused held upon a charge of adultery to await the action of the grand jury at McAlester in the Indian Territory. The bond was given shortly before Oklahoma became a State, named the United States as the obligee and called for the accused's appearance before the temporary court of Mc-Alester at the next term and from term to term until discharged. When the courts of the new State were organized an indictment for the adultery was returned against the accused in the state court at McAlester. He did not appear, a forfeiture was declared and the State sued on the bond, the surety alone being reached by the process. There was a judgment for the State, which *584 was affirmed, 34 Oklahoma, 781, and the surety sued out this writ of error.

The Federal questions presented involve the construction and application of the Enabling Act and are, first, whethérafter the admission of the State the further proceedings upon the charge of adultery were to be had in a Federal court or in a state court, and, second, whether by operation of law the State became the beneficiary of the bond and entitled to sue on it.

By reason of the conditions arising out of the presence of the Five Civilized Tribes no organized territorial government was ever established in the Indian Territory. TJp to the time it became a part of the State of Oklahoma it was governed under the immediate direction of Congress, which legislated for it in respect of many matters of local or domestic concern which in a State are regulated by the state legislature, and also applied" to it many laws dealing with subjects which under the Constitution are within Federal rather than state control. In what was done Congress did not' contemplate that this situation should be of long duration, but on the contrary that the Territory should be prepared for early inclusion in a State. Courts designated as “United States courts” were temporarily established and invested with a considerable measure of civil and criminal jurisdiction, and there was also provision for beginning public prosecutions before subordinate magistrates. There being no organized local government, such prosecutions, regardless of their nature, were commenced and conducted in the name of the United States, and in taking bail bonds it was named as the obligee.

The Enabling Act, June 16, 1906, c. 3335, 34 Stat. 267; March 4, 1907, c. 2911, ibid. 1286, provided that the new State should embrace the Indian Territory as well as the Territory of Oklahoma. It contemplated that the State, by its constitution, would establish a system of courts of its own, and provided for dividing the State into two dis *585 tricts and creating therein United States courts like those in other States. The temporary courts were to go out of existence and this made it necessary to provide for the disposition of the business pending before them in various stages. To that end the following provisions, among others not material here, were embodied in an amendment to the act, 34 Stat. 1286,1287:

“Sec. 16. . . . Prosecutions for all crimes and offenses committed within the Territory of Oklahoma or in the Indian Territory, pending in the district courts of the Territory of Oklahoma or in the United States courts in the Indian Territory upon the admission of such Territories as a State, which, had they been committed within a State, would have been cognizable in the Federal courts, shall be transferred to and be procéeded with in the United States circuit or district court established by this Act for the district in which the offenses were committed, in the same manner and with the same effect as if they had been committed within a State.”
“Sec. 20. That all causes, proceedings, and matters, civil or criminal, pending in the district courts of Oklahoma Territory, or in the United States courts in the Indian Territory, at the time said Territory become a State, not transferred to the United States circuit or district courts in the State of Oklahoma, shall be proceeded with, held, and determined by the courts of said State, the successors of said district courts of the Territory of Oklahoma, and the United States courts in the Indian Territory; ... All criminal cases pending in the United States courts in the Indian Territory, not transferred to the United States circuit or district courts in the State of Oklahoma, shall be prosecuted to a final determination in the State courts of Oklahoma under the laws now in force in that Territory;”

Section 28 of the schedule to the state constitution referred to these and other closely related provisions and *586 said, they “are hereby accepted and the jurisdiction of the cases enumerated therein is hereby assumed by the courts of the State.”

Thus by the concurrent action of Congress and the State all prosecutions, pending in the temporary courts of the Indian Territory, for offenses which would not have been cognizable in a court of the-United States had they been committed within a State, were to be proceeded with in the courts of the State, as successors to the temporary courts. In other words, the test of the jurisdiction of the state courts was to be the same that would have applied had the Indian Territory been a State when the offenses were committed. In this view it is plain that the prosecution in question was rightly proceeded with in the state court. Adultery is an offense against the marriage relation and belongs to the class of subjects which each State controls in its own way. It is a punishable offense only where i the common or statute law of the State makes ’t such, and where punishable, it is cognizable only in the courts of the State. Of course, we exclude from present consideration forts, arsenals and like places within the exterior limits of a State, but over which exclusive jurisdiction has been ceded to the United States, because they are regarded, not as part of the State, but as excepted out of it. And we pass the question of the power of Congress to deal with such offenses in respect of tribal Indians within a State, because the statute under which this prosecution arose was general in its terms, and because it is not claimed that either of the participants in the adulterous act was an Indian.

Some reliance is placed upon § 14 of the Enabling Act, which refers in part to offenses committed prior to the State’s admission, but of this section it is enough for present purposes to say that when it is read in connection with the provisions of §§ 16 and 20 before quoted it is apparent that it was intended to mark the line separating *587 the jurisdiction of the Federal courts in the two districts, as between themselves, and not the line separating their jurisdiction from that of the state courts.

Because no indictment was returned in the temporary court at McAlester before the State was admitted, it is contended that this prosecution was not “pending” in that court in the sense of §§ 16 and 20. These sections included all pending “causes, proceedings, and matters,” as well as “prosecutions” and “cases,” and evidently were designed to be very comprehensive.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

United States v. Taylor
62 M.J. 636 (Air Force Court of Criminal Appeals, 2006)
Indian Country v. State of Oklahoma
829 F.2d 967 (Tenth Circuit, 1987)
Commonwealth v. Stowell
449 N.E.2d 357 (Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, 1983)
District of Columbia v. Garcia
335 A.2d 217 (District of Columbia Court of Appeals, 1975)
Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton
413 U.S. 49 (Supreme Court, 1973)
State v. Ronek
176 N.W.2d 153 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 1970)
Wilson v. United States
77 F.2d 236 (Eighth Circuit, 1935)
Oregon v. Ingram
63 F.2d 417 (Ninth Circuit, 1933)
Conley v. United States
59 F.2d 929 (Eighth Circuit, 1932)
Schramm v. Done
293 P. 931 (Oregon Supreme Court, 1930)
Dagg v. Hammons
272 P. 643 (Arizona Supreme Court, 1928)
Sand Springs Home v. Title Guarantee & Trust Co.
16 F.2d 917 (Eighth Circuit, 1926)
Maust v. Warden of the United States Penitentiary
283 F. 912 (Eighth Circuit, 1922)
In re Jessie's Heirs
259 F. 694 (E.D. Oklahoma, 1919)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
241 U.S. 582, 36 S. Ct. 692, 60 L. Ed. 1187, 1916 U.S. LEXIS 1682, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/southern-surety-co-v-oklahoma-scotus-1916.