In re Farnham

Decided April 19, 1860

Michigan Supreme Court · decided 1860-04-19

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…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1860-04-19

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently July 1907

5 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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By the Court:

¶1The statute has conferred upon the examining magistrate no power to commit a witness for refusal to testify, and the relator must be discharged.

¶2The other question, inasmuch as the justice had no jurisdiction to commit at all, it would be improper for the court to pass upon.