The petitioner, J. D. Coles, was arrested, and he is now held in custody under an indictment found against him in the District Court of the United States for the Western District of Virginia. The indictment alleged that he, being a judge of the county court of Pittsylvania County of that State, and an officer charged by law with the selection of jurors to serve in the circuit and county courts of said county in the year 1878, did then and there exclude and fail to select as grand and petit jurors certain citizens of said county of Pittsylvania, of African race and black color, said citizens possessing all other qualifications prescribed by law, and being by him excluded from the jury lists made out by him as such judge, on account of their race, color, and previous condition of servitude, and for no other reason, against the peace and dignity of the United States, and against the form of the statute of the United States in such case made and provided.
Being thus in custody, he has presented to us his petition for a writ of habeas corpus and a writ of certiorari to bring up the record of the District Court, in order that he may be discharged; and he avers that the District Court had and has no jurisdiction of the matters charged against him in said indictment; that they constitute no offence punishable in said District Court; and that the finding of said indictment, and his consequent arrest and imprisonment, are unwarranted by the Constitution of the United States, or by any law made in pursuance thereof, and are in violation of his rights and of the rights of the State of Virginia, whose judicial officer he is.
A similar petition has been presented by the State of Virginia, praying for a habeas corpus and for the discharge of the said Coles. Accompanying both these petitions are exhibited copies of the indictment, the bench-warrant, and the return of the marshal, showing the arrest of the said Coles and his detention in custody.
Both these petitions have been considered as one case, and the first question they present is, whether this court has jurisdiction to award the writ asked for by the petitioners. The question is not free from difficulty, in view of the Constitution and the several acts of Congress relating to writs of habeas corpus, and in view of our decisions heretofore made. If granting the writ would be an exercise of original jurisdiction, it would seem that it could not be granted, unless the fact that one of the petitioners for the writ is the State of Virginia makes the cases to differ. This is established by the rulings in Marbury v. Madison (1 Cranch, 137), and in numerous subsequent decisions. And it is not readily perceived how the fact that a State applies for the writ to be directed to one of her own citizens can make a case for our original jurisdiction.
But the appellate power of this court is broader than its original, and generally-that is, in most cases-it may be said that the issue of a writ of habeas corpus by us, when it is directed to one of our inferior courts, is an exercise of our appellate jurisdiction. Without going at large into a discussion of its extent, it is sufficient for the present to notice the fact that the exercise of the appellate power is not limited by the Constitution to any particular form or mode. It is not alone by appeal or by writ of error that it may be invoked. In the Matter of Metzer (5 How. 176), it was indeed ruled that an order of commitment made by a district judge, at chambers, cannot be revised here by habeas corpus. But such an order was reviewable in no form; and, besides, the authority of that case has been much shaken. In re Kaine, 14 How. 103; Ex parte Yerger, 8 Wall. 85. In the latter of these cases, it was said by Chief Justice Chase, in delivering the opinion of the court: 'We regard as established, upon principle and authority, that the appellate jurisdiction by habeas corpus extends to all cases of commitment by the judicial authority of the United States, not within any exception made by Congress.'
In the present case, the petitioner Coles is in custody under a bench-warrant directed by the District Court, and the averment is that the court had no jurisdiction of the indictment on which the warrant is founded.
