Criminal law in the Chase Court

During the tenure of Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, the fundamental structure of the federal criminal system—arising from the Judiciary Act of 1789—underwent several legislative modifications.

According to Wiecek, "[i]n no comparable period of our nation's history have the federal courts, lower and Supreme, enjoyed as great an expansion of their jurisdiction as they did in the years of Reconstruction, 1863 to 1876.

[4] Further, by explicitly providing for appeals from habeas petitions in lower federal courts, the act abrogated the Supreme Court's decision in Barry v. Mercein (1847),[5] which held that such appeals could not be maintained as writs of error under § 22 of the Judiciary Act of 1789.

[16] Over the dissent of Justices Bradley and Swayne, the Court held that civil rights removal was improper on the grounds that the criminal defendant wished to call an African-American witness who were regarded as incompetent to testify under state law.

[22] But, in Klinger v. Missouri (1871), the Court permitted the exclusion of a criminal juror who had refused to take that oath; because the juror professed that he still supported the rebellion, that was reason enough to exclude him, and thus the failure to take the unconstitutional oath was not the reason for his exclusion.

In Ex parte McCardle (1867), the first such case, the Court denied a motion to dismiss, finding that it had such jurisdiction.

[28] In Ex parte McCardle (1869), the Court held that the repeal was a valid exercise of Congress's Exceptions Clause power.

[35] In United States v. Tynen (1870), the Court overturned a conviction under a statute that required vessel owners to only employ U.S. citizen crew members.

[36] In United States v. Howell (1870), the Court held that a counterfeiting statute was not void for repugnancy, distinguishing United States v. Cantril (1807), a decision of the Marshall Court interpreting a nearly identical statute.

[37] A Civil War-era statute prohibited obstruction of the draft or the enrollment of members in the armed forces.

[45] In Pervear v. Massachusetts (1866), the Court held that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment did not apply to the state governments, and—in the alternative, assuming that it did—a fine of $50 and three months hard labor was not an excessive punishment for bootlegging.

[21] And, in Twitchell v. Pennsylvania (1868), the Court held that the criminal procedure provisions of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments did not apply to the state governments.

[46] In United States v. Cook (1872), the Court held that—where a criminal statute both defines an offense and its exceptions—a criminal indictment must plead facts taking the case out of the exceptions if and only if the exception is inseparable from the definition of the offense.