Morning Herald

Important Decision.—Sometime since, it will be remembered that Crocker and another were arrested and committed to prison by Judge Betts, to take their trial in North Carolina for burning and plundering a vessel on the high seas, within the jurisdiction of that state. The captain (who was owner of the vessel) with his mate, were charged, one with the capital offence, the other with the felony, of stealing a quantity of gold from the vessel, consigned from a merchant in Cuba to a merchant in this city. Subsequent to the arrest and commitment, a civil action was tried against the captain in the Circuit Court, before Judge Edwards, to recover the money from the possession of a person in whose hands the captain had placed it for safe keeping. On Saturday, in the United States Circuit Court, Mr. Price moved for a writ of Habeas Corpus for the marshal to produce the bodies of the two prisoners, in order that they might be sent on to North Carolina for trial. Mr. P. stated that he pursued this course because the keeper of the City Prison had refused to deliver up the two men; he assigned as his reason for refusal that the men had been bailed—had been sued on a civil process and had been subsequently surrendered by their bail; and that if he delivered them up to the United States' authorities to be sent to North Carolina, he would render himself liable in an action at law to their bail in the amount of the damages obtained against them in the civil suit. Judge Betts decided that he could not grant the habeas corpus; he said that when the marshal of the United States delivered the bodies of the two prisoners for safe keeping to the keeper of the City or County Prison, the responsibility of the former virtually ceased, and the latter became bona fide the jailer of the United States for the time being.— And if the latter thus situated and thus delegated, refused to surrender the prisoners of the United States for trial under the laws of the United States in any part thereof, he rendered himself liable to be proceeded against the same as any common individual, for resisting an officer in the execution of his duty under the general law of the U. States in that case made and provided.