THE MURDERER KENNEDY - A QUESTION OF JURISDICTION
Judge Shepheard said yesterday, with reference to the case of Kennedy, the soldier who killed a fellow soldier at Black Point on Thursday last, that he would hold over the examination for three days, to give the military authorities an opportunity of making a formal demand of the prisoner, to be tried by a Court Martial, a claim to the exclusive jurisdiction over the case having been heretofore signified by them. We are assured, however, that the military authorities do not desire to take the case out of the hands of the civil authorities; thaain Winder have so expressed themselves. And besides, two serious obstacles might be interposed as against such a jurisdiction. In the first place the prisoner is evidently insane, and was so at the time the murder was committed; Fitzgerald being, it is reported, the third victim to his terrible fits; and there is no provision of our laws, authorizing a Military Court to act as a commission de inguirendo. And in the next place, there is a question about the title of the United States Government to the property at Black Point, the title to which is now being litigated, which fact might so affect it as a military reservation as to throw a strong shade of doubt over the supremacy of the military law within those particular limits.
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