Joseph G. Crane was a Union Army officer who was appointed mayor of

Jackson, Mississippi Jackson, officially the City of Jackson, is the Capital city, capital of and the List of municipalities in Mississippi, most populous city in the U.S. state of Mississippi. The city is also one of two county seats of Hinds County, Mississippi, ...

(the state capitol) in 1869. He was stabbed to death on the capitol steps by

Edward M. Yerger Edward M. Yerger (1828 – April 22, 1875) was an American newspaper editor and military officer. After a career in the newspaper industry, Yerger was arrested for the stabbing death of the provisional mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. His claim of ...

, a former Confederate Army officer who edited a newspaper. After military officials arrested his assailant, a writ of

Habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...

was filed and eventually appealed to the

U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

Ex parte Yerger ''Ex parte Yerger'', 75 U.S. (8 Wall.) 85 (1869), was a case heard by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the court held that, under the Judiciary Act of 1789, it is authorized to issue writs of habeas corpus. Background In June 1869 ...

. After it ruled, a deal was made and he was released to civil authorities, bonded out, and moved to Baltimore, Maryland. He was never tried. Crane was a breveted colonel. He was killed June 8, 1869. Yerger was represented by his uncle

William Yerger William Yerger (November 22, 1816 – June 7, 1872) was a justice of the Supreme Court of Mississippi from 1851 to 1853.Franklin Lafayette Riley, School History of Mississippi: For Use in Public and Private Schools' (1915), p. 380-82.Thomas H ...

who had served on the

Mississippi Supreme Court The Supreme Court of Mississippi is the highest court in the state of Mississippi. It was established in the first constitution of the state following its admission as a State of the Union in 1817 and was known as the High Court of Errors and Appe ...

in the 1850s. Under Crane’s authority a piano was seized from Yerger’s family to satisfy a tax assessment. Yerger owned and edited the Evening Journal in Baltimore.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Crane, Joseph G. Year of birth missing Assassinated American politicians Mayors of Jackson, Mississippi 1869 murders in the United States Union Army colonels 19th-century American politicians

See also

Further reading

References