The Nauvoo Municipal Court and the Writ of Habeas Corpus
The Nauvoo Municipal Court and the Writ of Habeas
Corpus
The writ of emerged in the sixteenth
century as an English common law remedy that permitted an authorized
judge or court to review the legality of a prisoner’s
detention. As American colonies established courts
of law, they also adopted the writ of habeas corpus as part of the
common law. The
Constitution prohibited Congress from suspending the writ except in
times of rebellion or invasion.
After reviewing the reasons for the detention, the court was allowed
to remand the prisoner to jail or, if there were procedural
irregularities, to discharge or bail the detainee.
Although seventeenth-century English jurist Edward Coke articulated
an influential rule that courts in proceedings should confine themselves to procedural defects and refrain from
examining evidence for the crime itself, some English and American
judges nevertheless reviewed the factual basis for the detention and
discharged prisoners if the evidence was deemed insufficient to hold
them. This discharge, however, did not function as an acquittal,
meaning that the charge could be brought again under certain
circumstances without triggering “double jeopardy.” The
degree to which a court could “enquire into any facts behind the
Writs” was a controversial issue in in the 1840s, with the state’s 1827 habeas
corpus statute specifying that courts could only discharge prisoners
for a limited number of jurisdictional or procedural problems.
In addition, courts were required to have jurisdiction over the
alleged crime in order to issue writs of habeas corpus to
petitioners. In 1789, Congress authorized federal courts to issue
writs of habeas corpus, but only for prisoners detained under “the
authority of the United States.” The Constitution of 1818 contained a provision
similar to that in the federal constitution. An 1827 Illinois statute
authorized the state supreme court and circuit courts to issue writs
of habeas corpus to review the detentions of prisoners who were held
for alleged violations of state laws.
The same law prohibited state courts from discharging prisoners held
“for any offence exclusively cognizable by the courts of the United
States.”
In 1840, the state legislature approved ’s , which authorized the city to operate a
municipal court with power to grant writs of . The incorporating act permitted the city
council—made up of the mayor, four aldermen, and nine councilors—to
pass any ordinance for the benefit and well-being of the city, as
long as the ordinance was “not repugnant” or inconsistent with the
or Illinois
constitutions. The charter empowered the mayor and the
aldermen to operate courts to adjudicate alleged violations of city
ordinances. The municipal court—composed of the
mayor as chief justice and aldermen as associate justices—heard
appeals from decisions made by the mayoral or aldermen courts. In
addition, the municipal court was authorized to issue writs of
habeas corpus “in all cases arising under the ordinances of the City
Council.”
In 1842, the City Council
passed ordinances that further defined and expanded the municipal
court’s habeas corpus powers because of threats that the government would extradite JS on charges related to the May
1842 shooting of former Missouri governor . First, ordinances
of 5 July and 8 August 1842 authorized the municipal court to issue
writs of habeas corpus to review any warrant, regardless of whether
it was issued by city, state, or federal authorities. Second, the 5
July ordinance guaranteed that Nauvoo citizens would have the “right
of trial” in the city, rather than being taken to the originating
jurisdiction for trial. The 8 August ordinance further specified
that if the municipal court found procedural problems with the
warrant, the prisoner was entitled to a discharge. If the court
found no procedural issues, the judges would “fully hear the merits
of the case” and reach a decision regarding the prisoner’s guilt or
innocence. These ordinances laid out general
principles but did not provide a detailed description of the process
the municipal court should follow in habeas corpus proceedings—from
granting a petition, through issuing and serving the writ, to
conducting hearings once the prisoner was brought before the court.
On 14 November 1842, the city council remedied these deficiencies
when it passed an ordinance that incorporated much of the language
from the 1827 habeas corpus act while eliminating
or revising some provisions that contradicted previous Nauvoo city
ordinances.
Under these ordinances, the
Municipal Court issued at least fifteen writs of between 1842 and 1844. Thirteen of these
writs were issued in cases in which prisoners were being held for
alleged violations of either or state law; the other two cases involved alleged
violations of law. The municipal court
discharged nearly all of the petitioners from their detention in
these cases. At times, the municipal
court went beyond a discharge and proceeded to hear the “merits of
the case” and acquit the petitioner of the underlying charge.
The willingness of prominent attorneys who were not members of the
church to practice law in the municipal court and publicly defend
its provisions reinforced JS’s views that the court’s use of
habeas corpus was reasonable. Despite considerable controversy in
western during the early 1840s surrounding
the Nauvoo Municipal Court’s expanded habeas corpus powers, no
higher court had determined the legality of the city
council’s
ordinances granting those powers. It therefore remained an unsettled
legal question.