Imperial Valley Press

WASHINGTON.-In a fight over a poker game at Oran, Algeria, last July, U. S. Merchant Seaman Albert F. McLeod stabbed a shipmate to death. Brought back to the United States, McLeod was tried before a military court martial at Norfolk, Virginia, found guilty and sentenced to ten years in federal reformatory at Chillicothe, Ohio. McLeod is now being held in the federal northeastern penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, however, from which address he has filed an appeal on the grounds that he should have been tried in civil courts.

There is no use becoming sentimental about this case or trying to build up any great howl of sympathy that an American citizen's civil liberties have been violated. Seaman McLeod probably got no more than he deserved. In fact, he probably got off pretty light if the evidence was as presented to the military tribunal. But the McLeod case is typical of a small number of similar incidents which have arisen during the war and it serves to point up the system of administering justice to civilians accused of crime in theaters of war.

COURT MARTIAL AGREED ON

Decision to try McLeod before a court martial was made after due consultation between legal lights of the army judge advocate general's division, the maritime commission and the department of justice which would have had to conduct prosecution if the case had been turned over to a civil court. Every case not finally disposed of in the theater of war is reviewed in this same way, and there is no inter-departmental feud in determining what to do.

The McLeod case was given to the military because a court martial can be conducted with depositions from the witnesses, whereas trial in a civil court requires the witnesses to testify in person. If McLeod had been tried before a civil court, it would have been necessary to bring in witnesses then scattered in ships all over the high seas and hold them for the trial. That would have broken up ships' crews, taken a lot of time and further complicated the war effort. Trial by court martial seemed the simplest and quickest way to get the McLeod case settled, though in other similar cases department of justice has brought accused men to trial in federal courts.

LAW IN HANDS OF SHIPMASTERS

The right of the military to administer justice in such a case is well fixed by law and precedent. Navigation laws of the United States have been written with perhaps more detail than any other statute. The authority of shipmasters to "log" their crew members, forfeiting their pay and administering other disciplinary punishments, is well fixed. Shipmasters may even put men in irons for mutiny and the other more serious offenses at sea.

In criminal cases in time of war, the law gives the army and navy jurisdiction over all men with or accompanying the armed forces into a theater of war. The term "theater of war" hasn't been very accurately defined but it has been interpreted broadly as meaning any place armed cargo or personnel are being carried.

Army officers have asserted this authority more than navy officers to keep order in supply ports and on beachheads, where merchant ships unload. At the beginning of the war young merchant shipmasters tended to dump their disciplinary problems into the lap of the army authorities, but that has been largely corrected. It is only when they get a tough one, like the McLeod murder case, that the army gets called in.

And this McLeod case may set a precedent.