|
''Kinsella v. Krueger'', and , was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled that the Constitution supersedes international treaties ratified by the United States Senate. According to the decision, the Court recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty, although the case itself was with regard to an executive agreement, not a "treaty" in the U.S. legal sense, and the agreement itself has never been ruled unconstitutional. == The case == Colonel Aubrey Dewitt Smith was the chief of the Logistics Section of the Plans and Operations Division at the headquarters, United States Army, Japan.〔 A graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, ranked 123d in the class of 1930, he had served with distinction with the 77th Infantry Division in the Battle of Okinawa, winning two Silver Stars, the Bronze Star Medal, the Legion of Merit and the Commendation Ribbon. He later served on the headquarters of the X Corps in the Korean War. He married Dorothy Krueger, the daughter of General Walter Krueger, who had commanded the Sixth United States Army during World War II. They had two children.〔 On 3 October 1952, Dorothy Smith stabbed her husband with a long hunting knife while he slept in their Army quarters in Japan.〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher=Arlington National Cemetery )〕 After trying unsuccessfully to staunch the flow of blood, Colonel Smith summoned their live-in Japanese maid, Shigeko Tani,〔 who found Dorothy Smith in her underwear and holding a knife.〔 She took the knife from Dorothy Smith and, at Colonel Smith's request, summoned Lieutenant Colonel Joseph S. Hardin,〔 a neighbor and fellow West Point-educated regular Army officer. Hardin found Dorothy attempting to light a pair of cigarettes. She told him: "I'm sorry I didn't get him in the heart."〔 Colonel Smith was taken to Tokyo Army Hospital, but died there from loss of blood at 6am the following morning. Dorothy Smith was held in the isolation ward of the 8167th Station Hospital for observation. Major General William E. Shambora, the Surgeon General of the Far East Command, ordered a psychiatric evaluation. In December 1952, an Army Medical Board declared her fit to stand trial.〔 A military court martial was convened in Tokyo under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. A nine-member court was convened in January 1953, headed by Major General Joseph P. Sullivan. Its members, all military officers, included a Women's Army Corps lieutenant colonel. Dorothy Smith's defense lawyer, Lieutenant Colonel Howard S. Levie, initially argued that the court had no legal jurisdiction over the wife of an Army officer. When this was rejected by the court, he argued that she was not guilty due to temporary insanity.〔 At the time of the incident, Dorothy Smith had been taking barbiturates and paraldehyde. The court martial was told that Dorothy Smith had undergone two months' treatment for mental illness in 1951, and had attempted suicide while on the ship to Japan the year before. Her personal physician, Brigadier General Rawley E. Chambers, told the court that Dorothy Smith was subject to "neurotic explosions," that she had slashed her wrists a number of times, and that she once had assaulted another Army wife. "I believe she would be able to tell right from wrong," the general said. "But I do not believe that she had any ability to adhere to the right."〔 By six votes to three, the court martial found Dorothy Smith guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced her "to be confined at hard labor for the rest of her natural life".〔 A unanimous verdict of guilty would have meant a mandatory death sentence. The case was reviewed by Brigadier General Onslow S. Rolfe, the commanding officer of the Headquarters and Service Command of the Far East Command, and the Judge Advocate General.〔 That he was junior in rank to Sullivan meant that his ability to overrule the former was constrained.〔 Meanwhile, Dorothy Smith was flown back to the United States in a Military Air Transport Service plane, which reached Travis Air Force Base near San Francisco on 25 February 1953. She was held at the Presidio of San Francisco, and then imprisoned at the Federal Prison Camp, Alderson, in West Virginia.〔 Walter Krueger's lawyers filed an appeal with the United States Court of Military Appeals. Brigadier General Adam Richmond, who had been judge advocate of the Third United States Army when it had been commanded by Krueger in the early 1940s, argued that Dorothy was not sane at the time of the incident, and that the testimony that the court-martial had heard to the contrary was military rather than medical.〔 On 30 December 1954, by a two-to-one majority, they rejected the appeal filed by Krueger's lawyers that "Since this court lacks the power to determine the weight of the evidence, even as to the issue of sanity, we are without authority to disturb the board’s determination – regardless of whether we might have reached an opposite conclusion," the court ruled. The opinion was written by Judge Paul W. Brosman, Judge George W. Latimer concurred. Chief Judge Robert F. Quinn dissented on the grounds that the prosecution's expert witnesses testified in accordance with Army regulations rather than their knowledge and medical experience,〔 feeling bound by the restrictive terms of the joint Air Force (AFM 160-42) and Army (TM 8–240) manual, ''Psychiatry in Military Law''. He felt that as a consequence, "their testimony was so seriously compromised as to require, in the interests of justice a rehearing."〔 Krueger's attorneys filed a writ of ''habeas corpus'' with Ben Moore, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, in Charleston, West Virginia, on 9 December 1955, based on a decision by District Court Judge Edward A. Tamm of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Tamm had released Mrs. Clarice B. Covert, the wife of an Air Force Sergeant who had killed her sleeping husband with an ax in England on 9 March 1953, from Alderson on a $1,000 bond. This in turn was based on a recent ruling by the United States Supreme Court on 7 November 1955 in the case of Robert W. Toth, a former Air Force Sergeant who had been tried by a court martial for a murder in Korea five months before he had been honorably discharged from the Air Force. The Supreme Court had ruled the military had no jurisdiction to try someone once they had been discharged from military service.〔 Krueger hired Covert's lawyer, Frederick Bernays Wiener to represent Dorothy. But Moore declined to follow Tamm, and denied relief. As a result, Covert was on release while Dorothy remained incarcerated in Alderson. Krueger appealed to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. The case became ''Kinsella v. Krueger'', Nina Kinsella being the prison warden at Alderson. While the appeal was pending the Government sought certiorari from the United States Supreme Court before the 4th Circuit heard the appeal. In view of the importance of the constitutional issue presented by the case, the writ was granted without action by the Circuit Court.〔〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=United States v. Kinsella, 137 F. Supp. 806 (S.D.W. Va. 1956) )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kinsella v. Krueger」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|