Cerecedo v. United States

Postponing consideration of a motion to dismiss until the hearing of the case on the merits is not a decision that the court has power to review the judgment. The rule in cases coming from the District Court of the United States for Porto Rico is that the existence of constitutional questions must appear in a bill of exceptions. Even though this court may have an extraordinary discretion in extreme cases to supply the absence of a bill of exceptions, there is no ground in this case for the exercise of such discretion.

ERROR TO THE DISTRICT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR PORTO RICO. The facts, which involve the jurisdiction of this court to review judgments of the District Court of the United States for Porto Rico, are stated in the opinion. submitted: This court has jurisdiction. The search warrants were Void and the searches and seizures made thereunder were in violation of the Constitution. The trial court should have ordered the return of the papers unlawfully seized and should not have admitted them in evidence. The United States attorney should have returned upon defendants’ demand the papers unlawfully seized. Private papers written by the defendants or any of them, taken from their possession by compulsory process, should not have been admitted in evidence. The trial court admitted other incompetent and irrelevant evidence. The trial court’s refusal to extend the time in which to file a bill of exceptions, and to permit the substitution of the supplemental assignment of errors was an abuse of discretion. In support of these contentions, see Adams v. New York, 192 U. S. 585; Boyd v. United States, 116 U. S. 616; Burton v. United States, 196 U. S. 283; Chateaugay Iron Co. v. Blake, 144 U. S. 476; Crowley v. United States, 194 U. S. 461; Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U. S. 244; Entick v. Carrington, 19 Howell’s St. Tr. 1029; Guardian Assurance Co. v. Quintana, 227 U. S. 103; Herbert v. Butler, 97 U. S. 319; Hall v. United States, 150 U. S. 76; Hardy v. Harbin, 154 U. S. 598; Rodriguez v. United States, 188 U. S. 156; Wilson v. United States, 149 U. S. 60; Williams v. United States, 168 U. S. 382; Weeks v. United States, 232 U. S. 383.