Señor Romero to Mr. Olney.
Mr. Secretary: By its notes of July 17, 1893, May 22 and July 24, 1894, this legation made application to the Department of State for the extradition of Inez Ruiz, Jesus Guerra, and Juan Duque, who were charged with the crimes of murder, robbery, arson, and kidnaping, committed in the town of San Ignacio, in the State of Tamaulipas, Mexico, on the 10th of December, 1892.
The proper judicial proceedings having been instituted before the circuit court of the United States for the western district of Texas, Commissioner L. F. Price decided that the evidence presented against Ruiz, Guerra, and Duque furnished ground to consider them, according to law, as guilty of those crimes, and he decided that they should be held as prisoners pending the issuance of an order by the President of the United States.
The Department of State replied by its note of July 9, 1894, that, as Inez Ruiz and Jesus Guerra had applied to a United States court in Texas for a writ of habeas corpus, it considered itself obliged to postpone its decision with regard to the extradition of those persons until the court should have decided concerning their application.
Judge Maxey, of the district court of the United States for the western district of Texas, granted a writ of habeas corpus to Inez Ruiz and Jesus Guerra, and also to Juan Duque, who had likewise made application therefor; but the consul of Mexico at San Antonio, Tex., appealed from that decision to the Supreme Court of the United States, and the latter court, in an opinion delivered by the Chief Justice on the 16th instant, a copy of which I herewith inclose, reversed the decision of Judge Maxey on the ground that, as Commissioner Price had had jurisdiction of the case, there was no ground for an application for habeas corpus.
For this reason, and all the legal requirements having been fulfilled before Commissioner Price in the application for the extradition of Inez Ruiz, Jesus Guerra, and Juan Duque, those persons may be legally surrendered to the Mexican authorities, according to the extradition treaty between the two countries, and I therefore beg you to procure and send the necessary orders to the proper United States officers.
Accept, etc.,