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Memorandum J. J. Casper to Mr. Mohr Re: Killing a Federal Officer Justices of the Supreme Court California where he was to sit as a circuit judge. Having heard of a plot to kill Justice Field, the Attorney General assigned Deputy United States Marshal Neagle to accompany him. While in a hotel shortly after arrival in California, Justice Field was attacked by a man whom Deputy Marshal Neagle then shot and killed. Neagle was jailed by California authorities, to be tried for murder. He brought habeas corpus and it was contended by California - and correctly so ~ that there was no Federal statute whatsoever which authorized Neagle to protect Justice Field. The: Supreme Court of the United States allowed the writ, however, and freed Neagie. By a decision which held, in effect, that even without any statutory authority whatso- ever the government of the United States is invested with power to protect itself and that the protection of Justice Field was sucha matter. The court opinion uses some language bearing on the present question, as follows: "Mr. Justice Field was a member of the Supreme Court of the United States...But the justices of this court have imposed upon them other duties, the most important of which arise out of the fac that they are also judges of the Circuit Courts of the United States...The justices of the Supreme Court have been members of the Circuit Courts of the United States ever since the organization of the government...It is not supposed that any special Act of Congress exists which authorizes the marshals or deputy marshals of the Unite States in express terms to accompany the judges of the Supreme Court through their circuits and act as a body-guard to them to defend them against malicious assaults against their persons...If a person in the situation of Justice Field could have no other guarantee of his personal safety, while engaged in the conscientious discharge of a disagreeable duty, than the fact that if he was murdered his murderer would be subject to the laws of a State and by those laws could be punished, the security would be very insufficient...We do not believe thatthe government of the United States is this inefficient, or that its Constitution and laws have left the high officers of the government so defenseless and unprotected."" Cunningham v. Neagle, 135 U.S. 1 (1890). Note how the opinion of the Supreme Court uses the terms "judge" and "justice” interchangeably, and bases that use on the fact that since the beginning of this government the justices of the Supreme Court have been members of the circuit courts of the United States. The justices of the Supreme Court, including the Chief Justice, still are members of the circuit courts as stated earlier herein by authority of Title 28, U.S. Code, sections 42, 43. There must be a later. designation but the latest we have is in the law books dated October 9, 1967, and shows, for example, that then ~2-