In re Farnham
Michigan Supreme Court
Habeas • Corpus. Certain persons being charged, before a justice of the peace of Clinton county, with the crime of murder, the relator, who was a telegraph operator, was called and sworn as a -witness, on the preliminary examination of such persons for the offense charged, and a question put to him relative to telegrajDh communications, supposed by the prosecution to have been sent and received by the defendants or some of them, by or through him, which question he declined…
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Habeas • Corpus. Certain persons being charged, before a justice of the peace of Clinton county, with the crime of murder, the relator, who was a telegraph operator, was called and sworn as a -witness, on the preliminary examination of such persons for the offense charged, and a question put to him relative to telegrajDh communications, supposed by the prosecution to have been sent and received by the defendants or some of them, by or through him, which question he declined to answer. The justice thereupon ordered the relator committed to the common jail, for contempt in so refusing, and…
1Opinion of the Court
By the Court:
The statute has conferred upon the examining magistrate no power to commit a witness for refusal to testify, and the relator must be discharged.
The other question, inasmuch as the justice had no jurisdiction to commit at all, it would be improper for the court to pass upon.
2Cited by5 opinions
- Allor v. Board of AuditorsMichigan Supreme Court · 1880
- State v. LeClairSupreme Judicial Court of Maine · 1894
- Farnham v. ColmanSouth Dakota Supreme Court · 1905
- In re EmeryMichigan Supreme Court · 1907
- Remington & Perkins v. PeckhamSupreme Court of Rhode Island · 1873