In re Neagle

Neagle was jailed for murder and feared what might happen to him in a community dominated by the Terrys' friends. He was able to obtain a writ of habeas corpus--perhaps because the judge who issued it, Lorenzo Sawyer, was the same judge who had been harassed and threatened by the Terrys in an earlier incident on a train.

With the writ, Neagle was freed, but he still faced the possibility of a murder trial. The sheriff in the jurisdiction where he had killed Terry appealed to the Supreme Court for the return of the prisoner. The question was whether Neagle was liable for murder--however justified--under the laws of the state of California, or if was he acting in his capacity as federal marshall, and therefore subject only to federal law. (Laws about murder are always state laws.)

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the man who had evidently saved the life of one of its members. Miller explained:

It would be a great reproach to the system of government of the United States, declared to be within its sphere sovereign and supreme, if there is to be found within the domain of its powers no means of protecting the judges, in the conscientious and faithful discharge of their duties, from the malice and hatred of those upon whom their judgments may operate unfavorably . . .

Miller went on to compare Deputy Marshal Neagle with a sheriff. Just as a sheriff is charged with keeping the peace of a state, he wrote, so must a marshall keep the peace of the nation. In protecting a federal judge, Neagle had fulfilled his responsibilities as a U.S. marshall.

Two justices did dissent from this opinion. They objected to the intrusion of federal power into the hitherto sacred domain of state criminal law. However, even these dissenters praised Neagle for his courage and quick thinking, and expressed their belief that even if he had been tried, a jury surely would have acquitted him.