31 Ind. 422 | Ind. | 1869
The complaint is as follows;— “ The plaintiff complains of the defendants, and says, that the said defendants with force and arms assaulted the said plaintiff, to wit, at the county of Fountain and State aforesaid, on or about tbe 28th of February, 1864, and then and there seized and laid hold of the said plaintiff, and then and there, with great force and violence, pulled and dragged about the said plaintiff, and then and there forced and compelled the said plaintiff to go off and from his said premises, near to his own dwelling-house, in the county aforesaid, and forced and compelled him to go in and through the woods, in the night time,, to a certain place in said county known as Steam Corners, and then and there tied and bound the
On the trial, there was proof that Graham was a sergeant in the 63d Regiment of Indiana Volunteers, in the service of the United States; that said Graham was sent home to recruit for his regiment in the field during the war, and was ordered to arrest deserters and all who should interfere with such arrests; that he made such an arrest at night, and while passing through a wood, not far from the plaintiff’s residence, the party having the deserters in charge was fired upon from the woods, and upon returning the fire, the assailants fled; that, proceeding a' short distance, the soldiers discovered the plaintiff crossing the road from the direction where the firing had occurred, to a neighbor’s house; he was halted and searched, and nothing was found but a part of a box of caps, though a witness testified to the plaintiff’s subsequent statement, as the witness remembered it, that he dropped a revolver when he stopped; that the plaintiff' seemed to be fatigued, and he “was puffing and blowing.” It was also testified, that the plaintiff was treasurer of a treasonable organization, whose object was the protection of deserters, and that plaintiff'had been indicted in the United States Court, and had pleaded guilty to a charge of harboring
There was an objection, on the trial, to the evidence of the contents of the order for the arrest of the deserters, but as the written order was shown to have been lost, the evidence was properly admitted.
There was a finding for the defendants.
The motion for a new trial is on the ground that the evidence does not sustain the verdict.
The law, as stated by Allen, in his work on the duties and liabilities of sheriffs, p. 61, is, that “if an innocent person is arrested upon suspicion by a private individual, such individual is excused if a felony was in fact committed, and there was reasonable ground to suspect the person arrested.” It was so held in Holley v. Mix, 3 Wend. 350. See, also, 1 Chit. Crim. Law, 15.
In this ease there had been a felony committed in the presence of an officer in the service of the United States; and that officer was authorized by an order from his superior officer, who derived his authority from the President of the United States, as Commander in Chief of the army, to arrest any one interfering with the exercise of his authority and take him before the nearest military authority. The.officer and those under his command were simply intending, in good faith, to obey this order; for there was evidence enough to show a strong probability that the plaintiff had so interfered.
By the fourth section of the act of March 3d, 1863, U. S. Stat. at Large, vol. 12, p. 156, Congress has expressly recognized the binding force of such orders, under the au
Judgment affirmed, with costs.