US SUPREME COURT DECISIONS

Applying to this case the rules stated in Spies v. Illinois, 123 U. S. 131, that

"to give this Court jurisdiction under § 109 Rev.Stat. because of the denial by a state court of any title, right, privilege or immunity claimed under the Constitution or any treaty or statute of the United States, it must appear on the record that such title, right, privilege or immunity was 'specially set up or claimed' at the proper time and in the proper way,"

that "to be reviewable here, the decision must be against the right so set up or claimed," and that "as the supreme court of the state was reviewing the decision of the trial court, it must appear that the claim was made in that court," it appears that at the trial of the plaintiff in error, no title, right, privilege or immunity under the Constitution, laws, or treaties of the United States was specially set up or claimed in the trial court.

When the highest appellate court of a state disposes of a question supposed to arise under the Constitution of the United States without a direct decision and in a way that is decisive of it, and which is not repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, and upon a ground which was not evasive, but real, then the decision of the alleged federal question was not necessary to the judgment rendered, and consequently this Court has no jurisdiction over the judgment.

Motion to dismiss. The plaintiff in error was indicted for murder, tried and convicted, in the Missouri. On appeal to the Supreme Court of that state the judgment in the trial court was affirmed. The federal questions which were supposed to arise in the case are stated in the opinion of the Court.