This case is brought here by the appellants for the purpose of obtaining a review of the order of the circuit court of the United States for the southern district of New York denying their application for a writ of habeas corpus. The proceeding which led up to the application for the writ was commenced under § 1014 of the Revised Statutes, which reads as follows:
'For any crime or offense against the United States, the offender may, by any justice or judge of the United States, or by any commissioner of a circuit court to take bail, or by any chancellor, judge of a supreme or superior court, chief or first judge of common pleas, mayor of a city, justice of the peace, or other magistrate, of any state where he may be found, and agreeably to the usual mode of process against offenders in such state, and at the expense of the United States, be arrested and imprisoned, or bailed, as the case may be, for trial before such court of the United States as by law has cognizance of the offense. Copies of the process shall be returned as speedily as may be into the clerk's office of such court, together with the recognizances of the witnesses for their appearance to testify in the case. And where any offender or witness is committed in any district other than that where the offense is to be tried, it shall be the duty of the judge of the district where such offender or witness is imprisoned seasonably to issue, and of the marshal to execute, a warrant for his removal to the district where the trial is to be had.'
The appellants were at the time of the commencement of the proceeding nonresidents of the state of Georgia, one of them being a resident of the state of Connecticut, two residing in the state of New York and one in the state of Massachusetts. The proceeding was inaugurated in the southern district of New York, where one of the assistants of the United States district attorney for that district, on December 13, 1899, made a sworn complaint in writing before United States Commissioner Shields, residing in that district, which complaint in substance charged upon information and belief the commission by the defendants, in the southern district of Georgia, of the crime of conspiracy to defraud the United States of divers large sums of money, by means of a fraudulent scheme devised by the defendants together with one Oberlin M. Carter, a captain of the corps of engineers, United States army; that the scheme was first devised and put in operation in the southern district of Georgia in or about the year 1891, and had been continuously in process of execution there by the defendants from that time until October 1, 1899. The complaint also recites, with some detail, certain acts of the defendants by which the conspiracy was effectuated and accomplished, and it also stated that complainant's belief in regard to the charge made by him was based upon information contained in an indictment found by the grand jury of the United States district court for the southern district of Georgia, on December 8, 1899, and he alleged that bench warrants had been issued for the arrest of the defendants from the clerk's office of that court on December 9, 1899, and he was informed and believed that the defendants were then in the southern district of New York. A certified copy of the indictment was attached and made a part of the complaint before the commissioner, who thereupon issued a warrant reciting the substance of the complaint, and directing the arrest of the defendants and their production before him to be dealt with according to law.
The defendants upon being notified of the issuing of the warrants at once appeared before the commissioner and asked for an examination, pending which they were enlarged upon bail. In the course of the examination, and in addition to the complaint already made, the assistant United States attorney for the southern district of New York on January 13, 1900, filed a deposition detailing certain acts of one or more of the defendants performed by them in order to effect and further the conspiracy set forth in the indictment referred to in his original complaint.