Show THE STAR ROUTES Decision of Jadge Cox In the Matter Washington 10In making his decision in the star route cases to day Judge Cox said We had nothing noth-ing to do with the popular sense of the term infamous but only with its technical sense as determined by the decisions of the courts and the enactment of the statutes The views he might entertain must be controlled by the local legislation of Congress and he felt compelled to avoid the instinctive field of specu lative for the narrower task of interpreting in-terpreting the laws as provided No person should be held to answer for capital or otherwise infamous crime except on presentation or in dictment by the grand jury Sec tion 1019 of the Revised Statutes for the District of Columbia declared that the police court should have original and exclusive jurisdiction over all offenses against the United States committed in the district not deemed capital or otherwise infamous in-famous crimes that is to say of all simple assaults and batteries and other misdemeanors not punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary These two enactments embraced all the offenses against the United States that could be committed within the district and grouped them in two classesthose which were capital or otherwise infamous and those not capital or otherwise infamous The offense charged in this information must be in one catiegory or the other it must be infamous in-famous or not infamous If the former the Constitution required it to be tried on presentment or indictment indict-ment by the grand jury if the latter lat-ter the police court had exclusive cognizance of it and it could only be tried in the criminal court upon an appeal Judge Cox cited authorities au-thorities and said it seemed the effort of legislation was to classify the offenses like that charged here amid infamous crimes and thereby secure the defendants from prosecution prose-cution except upon indictment If that were so of course the information informa-tion could never have been rightly filed Leave ought to have been refused re-fused and the order granting leave must necessarily be rescinded The information should not have been filed at all It would be proper for the court to examine the oaths to see whether probable cause was shnwrv and whether it was in such form as would justify issuing warrants war-rants It was not necessary that he should determine anything with regard re-gard to the sufficiency of the oath in the present case The information had been assailed on various grounds affecting its merits it had been claimed it did not set forth an indictable offense because the acts alleged might have been done in the discretion of the defendants or at least one of them awl that the only proceeding was by l impeachment It had also been claimed that a conspiracy must be so do some acts made criminal by the statute again that the informa 011 was contradictory and crime alleged impossible but any discussion discus-sion of these points by him he thought would be gratuitous and he said nothing It remains for me but to grant the motion made by the defendants de-fendants and order their discharge |