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Article III. de of the U. S. Constitution provides that:
“The betrayal opposed to the United States will consist only in waging war on it, or in adhering to its enemies, in rendering them aid and consolation. No one shall be convicted of treason on the testimony of two witnesses to the same manifest act, or on confession in open court. Congress will have the strength to impose the penalty of treason.
In 1790, the United States Congress decreed that:
“If any user or users, before loyalty to the United States of America, make war on them or adhere to their enemies, rendering them aid and convenience in the United States or elsewhere, and are convicted by confession in open court, or by the testimony of two witnesses to the same manifest act of treason of which he is accused, such user or users shall be found guilty of treason to the homeland opposed to the United States, and SUFFER DEATH; and that if any user or user, having knowledge of the commission of any of the foregoing treachery, conceals, and not immediately, as soon as practicable, reveals and makes known such to the President of the United States, or to any of his judges, or to the President or Governor of a particular State, or to any of its judges or judges, Such user or users, in case of conviction, shall be found guilty of imprisonment for treason and shall be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding seven years and a fine not exceeding one thousand and dollars. “
JAMES MADISON in factor 43 of The Federalist says:
“As treason can be committed against the United States, the authority of the United States may punish it: however, as new tangled and synthetic betrayals have been the wonderful engines through which violent factions, the herbal offspring of lax governments, have sometimes mocked their choice of malignancy among themselves, the Convention, with much judgment, has put a barrier to this specific danger by establishing a constitutional definition of crime. “
The Constitution limits the crime of treason to two classes; First, the outbreak of war against the United States; and secondly, to adhere to their enemies, to give them and comfort. In doing so, the same words of the Statute of Treason of EDOUARD TROISIÈME were adopted; and so the framers of the Constitution identified the well-established interpretation of those words in the handling of corrupt law that prevailed for centuries in England.
Betrayal, according to Lord COKK, derives from betrayal, treason; And betrayal, by contraction, betrayal, is betrayal itself.
In England, high treason can be committed against the KING, because the oath of allegiance is only to the KING, as the only ideal governor: he has no spouse in supremacy.
So far, however, there have been few cases in the United States in which it has been mandatory for federal courts to act on this matter. The prisoners were attempted in habeas corpus before the U. S. Supreme Court. In issuing the Court’s opinion, Chief Justice Marshall stated:
“To constitute this express crime for which the prisoners have now been commuted before the Court, it will be necessary to wage the war against the United States well. such a conspiracy is not treason. Conspire to provoke war. and actually provoking war, are different crimes. The first will have to be done by means of an assembly of men for a purpose, treason in itself, or the act of raising the war cannot be committed. * * * * * * * “It is not the purpose of the Court to say that no individual can be guilty of this crime if he has not given the impression in arms contrary to his country, on the contrary, if the war truly begins, that is, if a structure of men literally meets because the objective of achieving by force a target of treason, everyone who plays a role, small whether he or they have escaped the scene of action, and who are truly allied in the general conspiracy, will have to be seen as traitors, but will have there must be a true gathering of men so that treason constitutes the lifting of war, crimes as atrocious as those that have as their object the subversion by violence of the laws and establishments that have been ordered to ensure peace. and the happiness of society, w will not have to escape punishment for not having matured in treason. The wisdom of the legislature is competent to supply the case.
In US v. FRIES, Judge CHASE testified at trial and stated that the Court’s opinion is as follows:
“That if an organization of other persons conspires and meditates an insurrection to resist or oppose the enforcement of any law of the United States by force, they are only guilty of a felony; However, if they continue to achieve this goal by force, they are to blame for the betrayal of having started the war; and the quantity of hired force does not diminish or increase the crime, whether committed by a hundred or a thousand people, it does not matter;”
* * * “and that it is irrelevant whether the force employed is sufficient to realize the object; Any force analogous to fraud shall constitute a war crime. “
In US v. Aaron BURR, Chief Justice Marshall stated:
“There is no deception in announcing that there will have to be a war, otherwise there cannot be the crime of having started it; However, it would be very misleading to claim that a specific act involved or did not implicate the culprit in guilt and if, for example, an army were really raised for the stated purpose of waging open war against the United States and overthrowing its government, the question will have to be weighed very intentionally before passing judgment on the audacity to make the decision that no manifest act of Lifting of the war, through a purchasing commissioner who never saw the army, but who, knowing his aim and in contact with the insurgents, provided provisions to this army, or through a recruiting officer, holder of a commission in the insurgent service, who, although never been in the camp, has performed the specific function assigned to it. “
This able jurist, in the same case, declares that the term “raise the war,” as employed in the Constitution of the United States, is unquestionably employed in the same sense as it was understood in England and in that country, having been used in the Statute of Edward III. , from which he borrowed, and refers to the principles established through COKE, HALE, FOSTER, BLACKSTONE and HAWKINS.
FOSTER says:
“To attack the King’s forces, opposed to his authority, on the march or in barracks, is to war. “
And that
“To maintain a castle or fort opposed to the king or his forces, if genuine force is used to maintain possession, is to end the war. “–Sec. 4 Cranch Reps. 75, 137, Annex 470-507.
FOSTER extra declares, in his valuable Treaty of Treason, that every insurrection, in order to effect certain inventions of public and general interest, by means of armed force, must be, in the interpretation of the law, maximum treason in the clause of lifting the war. He is going to say:
“An armed gathering deployed in warrior form for the purpose of treachery is bellum, levatum, but not bellum percussum; Registration and marching are sufficient manifest acts, without reaching war or action. Thus, sailing on the King’s subjects, under a French Commission, France being then at war with us, was considered in solidarity with the King’s enemies, no other act of hostility is proved. ” — See four Cranch, p. cuatro78, cuatro79:
Lord COKE says, “If the boys conspire to impose war, and some of them impose the same, according to the conspiracy, it is treason in everything. “Because all of them were legally provided when the war began?Nope. ” Because in betrayal, Lord COKE continues, they are all principal and war breaks out. This doctrine of Lord COKE has been followed by all the following authors; And it is established in the English books that anything that turns a guy into an accomplice in a crime will make him the main one in a betrayal:
“It is well known,” says FOSTER, “that in the language of the law there are no props in high treason, they are all principles. Any example of incitement, aiding or covering which, on the occasion of a crime, a male partner will make before or after the fact, in case of high treason, whether treason under the non-unusual law or by law, shall render it principal in treason. “
“The convenience of making an investment by the national government. “Judge STORY, in his comments on the Constitution, “with authority to punish the crime of treason against the United States, may never deal with persons whom the national government deems worthy of creation or preservation. If force had not been explicitly granted, it would have to have been implicit, unless all the forces of the national government were defied and prostrated with impunity. Two reasons probably conspired to introduce it as an explicit force. To imply whether he deserves to be punished exclusively with death, according to the well-known rule of the not unusual law, and with the barbarous accompaniments that he indicated, however, leave the punishment to the discretion of Congress. The other was to impose some limitation on the nature and length of the sentence, so that it would not result in corruption of blood or forfeiture beyond the life of the culprit. “
Treason has been thought of as the most serious crime that can be committed in civil society; Since its goal is the overthrow of the government and public resistance by force of its just forces, its tendency is to create universal danger and alarm, and because of this it has occasionally been visited by the most intimate resentment of the public. Unusual law, the punishment of high treason was accompanied by all the refinements of cruelty that were sometimes literally and conscientiously executed. But under the U. S. Constitution, the force to punish the crime of treason against the United States is exclusive to Congress; and the trial of the crime is the sole responsibility of the federal courts. A State cannot know or punish the crime, whatever it does in relation to the crime of treason committed exclusively against itself.
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