Cheong Ah Moy v. United States

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Cheong Ah Moy v. United States

Argued January 9, 1885
Decided January 26, 1885

Full case name:	Cheong Ah Moy v. United States

Citations:	113 U.S. 216

Holding

Court membership

Chief Justice: Morrison Waite
Associate Justices: Samuel Freeman Miller, Stephen Johnson Field, Joseph Philo Bradley, John Marshall Harlan, William Burnham Woods, Thomas Stanley Matthews, Horace Gray, Samuel Blatchford

Case opinions

Cheong Ah Moy v. United States, 113 U.S. 216 (1885), was a case regarding a Chinese woman who upon her arrival at San Francisco from China, was not permitted to land in that city by reason of the Acts of Congress of May 6, 1882, (ammended 1884). she was forcibly kept on board the vessel and so sued out a writ of habeas corpus to obtain her release.^[1]

The circuit court of the United States ordered that she be returned to the a vessel of the same line to be carried back to China, and she was placed in the custody of the marshal, who was directed to execute the order. The marshal found that the original vessel had sailed, and so marshal placed his prisoner in jail for safekeeping until another vessel should be at hand to remove her.

Her counsel, upon this state of facts, applied to the circuit court for permission to give bail on behalf of the woman and have her released from custody. The judges of the circuit court were opposed in opinion on the question of granting this motion, and, having overruled it, have certified the division to this Court.

In the meantime, on the second day of October, three days after an order was made overruling the motion, and ten days before the writ of error herein was served by filing it in the clerk's office of the circuit court, the marshal had executed the original order of the court by placing the prisoner on board the steamship New York, one of the Pacific Mail steamships, about to start for China, and that she departed on said vessel on the seventh day of October. It thus appears that the order of deportation had been fully executed, and the petitioner in the writ of habeas corpus placed without the jurisdiction of the court and of the United States six days before the writ of error was filed in the circuit court and several days before it was issued. The question, therefore, which we are asked to decide is a moot question as to plaintiff in error, and if she was permitted to give bail, it could be of no value to her, as the order by which she was remanded has been executed, and she is no longer in the custody of the marshal or in prison.

The Court declined to decide a question arising in a case which no longer exists in regard to rights which it cannot enforce.