Michael Flynn's Call For 'Martial Law' Comes Amid Violent Threats Over Trump Election Defeat

[marble falls]

28. Coincidently enough, one of my ancestors, Charles Slaughter Morehead ...

... a pro-slavery, non-secessionist Whig/Know-Nothing Party Governor of Kentucky was locked up in the aftermath of the suspension of Habeas Corpus.

Due process, facing accusers, being represented in a legal process are inalienable rights.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_Corpus_Suspension_Act_(1863)

"The Habeas Corpus Suspension, 12 Stat. 755 (1863), entitled An Act relating to Habeas Corpus, and regulating Judicial Proceedings in Certain Cases, was an Act of Congress that authorized the president of the United States to suspend the right of habeas corpus in response to the American Civil War and provided for the release of political prisoners. It began in the House of Representatives as an indemnity bill, introduced on December 5, 1862, releasing the president and his subordinates from any liability for having suspended habeas corpus without congressional approval.[1] The Senate amended the House's bill,[2] and the compromise reported out of the conference committee altered it to qualify the indemnity and to suspend habeas corpus on Congress's own authority.[3] Abraham Lincoln signed the bill into law on March 3, 1863, and suspended habeas corpus under the authority it granted him six months later. The suspension was partially lifted with the issuance of Proclamation 148 by Andrew Johnson,[4] and the Act became inoperative with the end of the Civil War. The exceptions to his Proclamation 148 were the States of Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas, the District of Columbia, and the Territories of New Mexico and Arizona."

"The Act allowed the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus so long as the Civil War was ongoing.[36] Normally, a judge would issue a writ of habeas corpus to compel a jailer to state the reason for holding a particular prisoner and, if the judge was not satisfied that the prisoner was being held lawfully, could release him. As a result of the Act, the jailer could now reply that a prisoner was held under the authority of the president and this response would suspend further proceedings in the case until the president lifted the suspension of habeas corpus or the Civil War ended.[36]

The Act also provided for the release of prisoners in a section originally authored by Maryland Congressman Henry May, who had been arrested without recourse to habeas in 1861, while serving in Congress.[22] It required the secretaries of State and War to provide the judges of the federal district and circuit courts with a list of every person who was held as a state or political prisoner and not as a prisoner of war wherever the federal courts were still operational.[37] If the secretaries did not include a prisoner on the list, the judge was ordered to free them.[38] If a grand jury failed to indict anyone on the list before the end of its session, that prisoner was to be released, so long as they took an oath of allegiance and swore that they would not aid the rebellion.[37] Judges could, if they concluded that the public safety required it, set bail before releasing such unindicted prisoners.[37] If the grand jury did indict a prisoner, that person could still be set free on bail if they were charged with a crime that in peacetime would ordinarily make them eligible for bail.[38] These provisions for those held as "political prisoners", as Henry May felt he had been, were first proposed by Congressman May in a bill in March 1862.[21]

The Act further restricted how and why military and civilian officials could be sued. Anyone acting in an official capacity could not be convicted for false arrest, false imprisonment, trespassing, or any crime related to a search and seizure; this applied to actions done under Lincoln's prior suspensions of habeas corpus as well as future ones.[39] If anyone brought a suit against a civilian or military official in any state court, or if state prosecutors went after them, the official could request that the trial instead take place in the (friendlier) federal court system.[40] Moreover, if the official won the case, they could collect double in damages from the plaintiff.[40] Any case could be appealed to the United States Supreme Court on a writ of error.[41] Any suits to be brought against civilian or military officials had to be brought within two years of the arrest or the passage of the Act, whichever was later.[42]"

"Aftermath

President Lincoln used the authority granted him under the Act on September 15, 1863, to suspend habeas corpus throughout the Union in any case involving prisoners of war, spies, traitors, or any member of the military.[43] He subsequently both suspended habeas corpus and imposed martial law in Kentucky on July 5, 1864.[44] An objection was made to the Act that it did not itself suspend the writ of habeas corpus but instead conferred that authority upon the president, and that the Act therefore violated the nondelegation doctrine prohibiting Congress from transferring its legislative authority, but no court adopted that view.[45] Andrew Johnson restored civilian courts to Kentucky in October, 1865,[46] and revoked the suspension of habeas corpus in states and territories that had not joined the rebellion on December 1 later that year.[47] At least one court had already ruled that the authority of the president to suspend the privilege of the writ had expired with the end of the rebellion a year and a half earlier.[48]
Photograph of Lambdin P. Milligan
Lambdin P. Milligan, one of those arrested while habeas corpus was suspended and tried by military commission

One of those arrested while habeas corpus was suspended was Lambdin P. Milligan. Milligan was arrested in Indiana on October 5, 1864, for conspiring with four others to steal weapons and invade Union prisoner-of-war camps to release Confederate prisoners. They were tried before a military tribunal, found guilty, and sentenced to hang. In ex parte Milligan, the United States Supreme Court held that the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act did not authorize military tribunals, that as a matter of constitutional law the suspension of habeas corpus did not itself authorize trial by military tribunals, and that neither the Act nor the laws of war permitted the imposition of martial law where civilian courts were open and operating unimpeded.[49]

The Court had earlier avoided the questions arising in ex parte Milligan regarding the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act in a case concerning former Congressman and Ohio Copperhead politician Clement Vallandigham. General Ambrose E. Burnside had him arrested in May 1863 claiming his anti-Lincoln and anti-war speeches continued to give aid to the enemy after his having been warned to cease doing so. Vallandigham was tried by a military tribunal and sentenced to two years in a military prison. Lincoln quickly commuted his sentence to banishment to the Confederacy. Vallandigham appealed his sentence, arguing that the Enrollment Act did not authorize his trial by a military tribunal rather than in ordinary civilian courts, that he was not ordinarily subject to court martial, and that General Burnside could not expand the jurisdiction of military courts on his own authority. The Supreme Court did not address the substance of Vallandigham's appeal, instead denying that it possessed the jurisdiction to review the proceedings of military tribunals upon a writ of habeas corpus without explicit congressional authorization.[50] Vallandigham was subsequently deported to the South where he turned himself in for arrest as a Union citizen behind enemy lines and was placed in a Confederate prison.[51]"


"Because all of the provisions of the Act referred to the Civil War, they were rendered inoperative with the conclusion of the war and no longer remain in effect. The Habeas Corpus Act of 1867 partially restored habeas corpus, extending federal habeas corpus protection to anyone "restrained of his or her liberty in violation of the constitution, or of any treaty or law of the United States", while continuing to deny habeas relief to anyone who had already been arrested for a military offense or for aiding the Confederacy.[52][53] The provisions for the release of prisoners were incorporated into the Civil Rights Act of 1871, which authorized the suspension of habeas corpus in order to break the Ku Klux Klan. Congress strengthened the protections for officials sued for actions arising from the suspension of habeas corpus in 1866[54] and 1867.[55][56] Its provisions were omitted from the Revised Statutes of the United States, the codification of federal legislation in effect as of 1873.[57]"