Calvert Coin with Map of Maryland
The Compact of 1785


by Carl Everstine (1946)
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Judicial History	27

State of Maryland, either against the other, shall be tried
in a court of that state of which the offender is a citizen."
Therefore, said Marsh, he was by the Compact entitled to
a trial by a court of his own state, Maryland.

	However, the Court refused to apply Article 10, saying
	that the boundary line in these waters was no longer doubt
	ful, and therefore that the whole reason for applying the
	article failed:

	As a matter of historical fact, no part of the line
	between Maryland and Virginia was at the date of
	the Compact of 1785 more doubtful than the part
	between Smiths and Watkins points, and no law could
	be more just and judicious than the tenth section of
	the Compact of 1785.

	However, after the Award of 1877 had been accepted
	by both states,

Probably no section of a boundary line was ever more
clearly, precisely, minutely, definitely, or intelligibly
laid down and defined than was the portion of the
Maryland and Virginia line between Smith's and Wat
kin's points .... The line is no longer doubtful, and
the defense of the prisoner Marsh is inadmissible. It
was competent for the Virginia court by which he
was convicted to try him ....

	The holding was, then, that as the boundary line in
	Tangier Sound was now fixed and certain, the concurrent
	criminal jurisdiction provided in Article 10 of the Compact
	was no longer effective. The Court might also have held,
	as the Virginia Court had ruled in the Hendricks case,
	that violations of the fishery laws were covered exclusively
	by Article 8, and that in any event Article 10 concerned
	only offenses by one individual against another, as distin
	guished from offenses by an individual against the State.

	I. Wharton v. Wise (1894). Wharton was a citizen of
	Maryland who was indicted in Accomac County, Virginia,
	for taking oysters from the Virginia side of Pocomoke
	Sound. He pleaded to the jurisdiction of the Virginia



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