“I hereby certify and return that before the coming to me of the hereto-annexed writ of habeas corpus, the said Stephen J. Field was committed to my custody, and is detained by me by virtue of a warrant issued out of the justice’s court of Stockton township, State of California, county of San Joaquin, and by the endorsement made upon said warrant.  Copy of said warrant and endorsement is annexed hereto, and made a part of this return.  Nevertheless, I have the body of the said Stephen J. Field before the honorable court, as I am in the said writ commanded.

    “August 16, 1889. 
    “THOMAS CUNNINGHAM,
    “Sheriff, San Joaquin Co., California.”

In order to give the petitioner time to traverse the return if he thought it expedient to do so, and to give him and the State time to produce witnesses, the further hearing upon the return was adjourned until the following Thursday morning, the 22d, and the petitioner was released on his recognizance with a bond fixed at $5,000.

On the same day a petition on the part of Neagle was presented to Judge Sawyer asking that a writ of habeas corpus issue in his behalf to Sheriff Cunningham.  The petition was granted at once, and served upon the sheriff immediately after the service of the writ issued on behalf of Justice Field.  Early on the morning of Saturday, August 17, Neagle was brought from Stockton by the sheriff at 4:30 A.M.  District Attorney White and Mrs. Terry’s lawyer, Maguire, were duly notified of this movement and were passengers on the same train.  At 10:30 Sheriff Cunningham appeared in the Circuit Court with Neagle to respond to the writ.  He returned that he held Neagle in custody, under a warrant issued by a justice of the peace of that county, a copy of which he produced; and also a copy of the affidavit of Sarah Althea Terry upon which the warrant was issued.  A traverse to that return was then filed, presenting various grounds why the petitioner should not be held, the most important of which were that an officer of the United States, specially charged with a particular duty, that of protecting one of the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States whilst engaged in the performance of his duty, could not, for an act constituting the very performance of that duty, be taken from the further discharge of his duty and imprisoned by the State authorities, and that when an officer of the United States in the discharge of his duties is charged with an offense consisting in the performance of those duties, and is sought to be arrested, and taken from the further performance of them, he can be brought before the tribunals of the nation of which he is an officer, and the fact then inquired into.  The attorney-general of the State appeared with the district attorney of San Joaquin county, and contended that the offense of which the petitioner was charged could only be inquired into before the tribunals of the State.