The King v. Rapp

SCOTUSCase
Litigants=King v. Raap
ArgueDate=April term
ArgueYear=1764
DecideDate=April term
DecideYear=1764
FullName=The King v. Philip Henry Rapp
USVol=1
USPage=9
Holding=The Court held "Indictment for Misdemeanor, in marrying a Man to a Woman who had another Husband living. Moved, on the Part of the Defendant, to put off the Trial on Affidavit of material Witnesses wanting, and that he had taken the proper steps to get them. Opposed by the Attorney General, as being a criminal Case, and not within the Rules of civil Cases. But granted by the Court, the Defendant being a Clergyman, and his Living depending on his acquittal: but declared not to be a Precedent."
SCOTUS=1764 |Majority=
JoinMajority="unanimous"

King v. Rapp, 1 U.S. 9 (1764) is a decision of a Pennsylvania Provincial Court, issued when Pennsylvania was still an English colony. It is among the first decisions that appear in the first volume of United States Reports, and is among the earliest surviving court decisions in North America.

Colonial and Early State Court Cases in the United States Reports

None of the decisions appearing in the first volume and most of the second volume of the United States Reports are actually decisions of the United States Supreme Court. Instead, they are decisions from various Pennsylvania courts, dating from the colonial period and the first decade after Independence. Alexander Dallas, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania lawyer and journalist, had been in the business of reporting these cases for newspapers and periodicals. He subsequently began compiling his case reports in a bound volume, which he called “Reports of cases ruled and adjudged in the courts of Pennsylvania, before and since the Revolution”. [Cohen, Morris and O’Connor, Sharon H. "A Guide to the Early Reports of the Supreme Court of the United States", (Fred B. Rothman & Co, Littleton Colorado, 1995] This would come to be known as the first volume of "Dallas Reports."

When the United States Supreme Court, along with the rest of the new Federal Government, moved in 1791 to the nation’s temporary capital in Philadelphia, Dallas was appointed the Supreme Court’s first unofficial and unpaid Supreme Court Reporter. (Court reporters in that age received no salary, but were expected to profit from the publication and sale of their compiled decisions.) Dallas continued to collect and publish Pennsylvania decisions in a second volume of his Reports, and when the Supreme Court began hearing cases, he added those cases to his reports, starting towards the end of the second volume, “2 Dallas Reports”. Dallas would go on to publish a total of 4 volumes of decisions during his tenure as Reporter.

In 1874, the U.S. government created the United States Reports, and numbered the volumes previously published privately as part of that series, starting from the first volume of Dallas Reports. The four volumes Dallas published were retitled volumes 1 - 4 of United States Reports. [Hall, Kermit, ed. "Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States" (Oxford 1992), p 215, 727] As a result, decisions appearing in these early reports have dual citation forms; one for the volume number of the United States Reports, and one for the set of reports named for the reporter (called nominative reports). For example, the complete citation to "King v. Rapp" is 1 U.S. 9 (1 Dallas 9) (1764).

The Decision

According to Dallas’s annotations, Rapp was a clergyman accused of the misdemeanor of performing a marriage between a man and a woman who already had a husband living, thus suborning bigamy. Rapp or his attorney sought to “put off the Trial” for lack of material witness affidavits, despite his taking appropriate steps to obtain them. Rapp was essentially arguing that the trial should be delayed due to the unavailability of material witnesses. The Attorney General prosecuting the case opposed Rapp’s motion, which was apparently a device used in civil cases, arguing that the rules of civil procedure did not apply in this criminal case.

Dallas’s report lacks clarity and detail, but apparently suggests that the Court, mindful of the fact that the defendant was a clergyman and would not be able to earn a living absent an acquittal in this case, granted the motion and dismissed the case. However the court made a point of stating its decision did not constitute a precedent. It seems probable that the Court applied the principle of benefit of clergy to allow the defendant to escape this one charge.

Precedential Effect

Despite the Court’s admonition that this decision was not to be cited as precedent, it was in fact cited once in the 20th century. Before the Superior Court of Pennsylvania in the case of "The Commonwealth v, Craig" 19 Pa. Super. 81 (1902), the attorneys representing Mr. Craig, who was accused of stealing 25 chickens, cited "King v. Rapp " for the premise that a continuance (postponement) of a trial due to the absence of a material witness could be had in both criminal and civil trials.

Notes

References

Hall, Kermit, ed. "Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States" (Oxford 1992),

Goebel, Jr., Julius, "The Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States Volume 1: Antecedents and Beginnings to 1801" (MacMillian, 1971)

Walters, jr., Raymond "Alexander Dallas: Lawyer -- Politician -- Financier, 1759 - 1817" (Da Capo Press, 1969)

The King v. Rapp, 1 U.S. 9 (1 Dall. 9) (1764)

ee also

*List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 1