HABEAS CORPUS ACT is the famous act of 31st Car. II., cap. 2, which is frequently considered as another magna charta of the kingdom. It enacts—1. That on complaint and request in writing by or on behalf of any person committed and charged with any crime (unless committed for treason or felony expressed in the warrant), or as accessory, or on suspicion of being accessory, before the fact, to any petit-treason or felony, plainly expressed in the warrant, or unless he is convicted or charged in execution by legal process, the Lord Chancellor, or any of the twelve judges in vaca-
Habeas corpus Act. tion, upon viewing a copy of the warrant, or affidavit that a copy is denied, shall, unless the party has neglected for two terms to apply to any court for his enlargement, award a habeas corpus for such prisoner, returnable immediately before himself or any other of the judges; and, upon the return made, shall discharge the party, if bailable, upon giving security to appear and answer to the accusation in the proper court of judicature. 2. That such writs shall be indorsed, as granted in pursuance of this act, and signed by the person awarding them. 3. That the writ of habeas corpus shall be returned and the prisoner brought up, within a limited time according to the distance, not exceeding in any case twenty days. 4. That officers and keepers neglecting to make due returns, or not delivering to the prisoner or his agent, within six hours after demand, a copy of the warrant of commitment, or shifting the custody of a prisoner from one to another without sufficient reason or authority (specified in the act), shall, for the first offence, forfeit L.100, and for the second offence L.200, to the party grieved, and be disabled to hold his office. 5. That no person, once delivered by habeas corpus, shall be re-committed for the same offence, on penalty of L.500. 6. That every person committed for treason or felony shall, if he requires it the first week of the next term, or the first day of the next session of oyer and terminer, be indicted in that term or session, or else admitted to bail, unless the crown witnesses cannot be produced at that time; and if acquitted, or if not indicted and tried in the second term or session, he shall be discharged from his imprisonment for such imputed offence; but that no person, after the assizes shall be opened for the county in which he is detained, shall be removed by habeas corpus until after the assizes are ended, but shall be left to the justice of the judges of assize. 7. That any such prisoner may move for and obtain his habeas corpus as well out of the Chancery or Exchequer as out of the King's Bench or Common Pleas; and the Lord Chancellor or judges denying the same, on sight of the warrant, shall, on oath that the same is refused, forfeit severally to the party grieved the sum of L.500. 8. That the writ of habeas corpus shall run into the counties palatine, cinque ports, and other privileged places, and the islands of Jersey and Guernsey. 9. That no inhabitant of England, except persons contracting, or convicts praying to be transported, or having committed some capital offence in the place to which they are sent, shall be sent prisoners to Scotland, Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey, or any places beyond the seas, within or without the British dominions, on pain that the party committing, his advisers, aiders, and assistants, shall forfeit to the party grieved a sum not less than L.500, to be recovered with treble costs, shall be disabled from holding any office of trust or profit, shall incur the penalties of præmunire, and shall be incapable of the royal pardon.
This is the substance of that great and important statute, which extends only to the case of commitments for such criminal charges as can produce no inconvenience to public justice by a temporary enlargement of the prisoner; all other cases of unjust imprisonment being left to the habeas corpus at common law. But even upon writs at the common law it is expected by the court, agreeably to ancient precedents and the spirit of the act of parliament, that the writ should be immediately obeyed, without waiting for any alias or pluries; otherwise an attachment will issue. By these admirable regulations, judicial as well as parliamentary, the remedy is now complete for removing the injury of unjust and illegal confinement; a remedy the more necessary, because the oppression does not always arise designedly, but sometimes from the mere inattention of government. For it frequently happens in foreign countries, and has happened in England during the temporary suspension of the statute, that persons apprehended upon suspicion have suffered a long imprisonment merely because they were forgotten.
In Scots Law, the form corresponding to the habeas corpus is called "Running Letters."