A BOOK ON U.S. APPLICABLE LAW

Deacon San Nguyen

U.S. MARSHAL SERVICE

U.S. Marshal Service, U.S. District Attorney Office, U.S. Probation Office, and U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Service all connect to Federal Court tightly. Thus, talking about Federal Court without mentioning about 4 above organizations is a shortcoming.

U.S. Marshal Service is a very important organization in Federal Judiciary System. The Marshal holds much power in hands. This position is very political because a U.S. Marshal must be appointed by The President of U.S.A. The term of a U.S. Marshal is 4 years and can be renew many times until retirement. Usually, when a new President just takes over the White House, he may appoint another man to replace the old one if the old Marshal belongs to other Party.

Two hundred years ago, George Washington, the First President of U.S.A. appointed the first 13 U.S. Marshals. Nowadays, there are 94 U.S. Marshals who conduct about 3,000 employees in the whole country. In 81 years before U.S. Department of Justice was established, U.S. Marshals were so powerful to execute all lawful warrants issued to them and under the authority of the Federal Judiciary System. Nowadays, U.S. Marshals are under directly the direction of Attorney General of the U.S.

The U.S. Marshal Service has activities all over the country, including Puerto Rico, The Virgin Island, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Island.

On the tops of the Service, there are U.S. Marshal and Chief Deputy U.S. Marshal. Under the tops are Supervisors, Deputy Marshals, and Administrative Personnel. There is Security Personnel who is responsible for the safe of witnesses at Court, Security Personnel who guards the Court, Evidence Examiners, Guards at rooms of evidence and all collections collected at the criminal scenes.

U.S. Marshal Service is the primary agency for fugitive operations, responsible for the protection of officers of the court, serving federal level arrest warrants, for the effective operation of the judiciary. To fulfill their duties, U.S. Marshals need to learn all modern firearms, guns, and scientific techniques.

Below are main duties of U.S. Marshal Service:

  1. Protecting the U.S. Courts. U.S. Marshals apply all modern techniques to control all people in and out of the Court and provide safety for Judges, Court Employees, District Attorneys, and Witnesses. Those duties are very complex. For example, if receiving a threat from telephone or threatening letter, immediately, U.S. Marshal Service must verify the information and if the info is true, will do everything they can to prevent a danger or to protect the court and all personnel in there. If a Court Personnel is threatened, U.S. Marshal must protect that person 24 hours continuously. Besides, U.S. Marshal Service has to install all modern equipment to keep all offices safe day and night.
  2. Fugitive Investigation. U.S. Marshals perform investigation and apprehension of fugitives, people not obeying Court summons, or suspects who run away after paying bail. Recently, U.S. Marshal Service also is responsible for apprehension of drug sellers who sell drug from state to state. Yearly, this Service apprehended about 14,000 run-away criminals depending on modern techniques, man-hunt operations directly to secret places in which criminals seek concealment. Indeed, those operations succeeded based on the cooperation of all secret services, FBI and local police forces. At other countries, U.S. Marshals succeeded depending on the cooperation of local governments.
  3. Special Operation Group. This special group is a group consisted of all talent men who were trained excessively hard. When it is necessary to arrest some dangerous criminals in well-concealed lairs, U.S. Marshals Service will send this group to be sure that the operation will succeed. Usually, they need only few hours to arrive anywhere in the country, day or night.
  4. Protection of Federal Witnesses. Another duty of U.S. Marshals is to protect the lives of witnesses who are ready to go to Court to accuse some criminals at Court or in secret meetings of Jurors. Since 1970 until now, thousands of witnesses had been protected safely by moving to another state with new identities so that they would not be revenged by the criminals or their gangs.
  5. Prisoner Transportation and Custody. Every year, U.S. Marshals transport more than 90,000 criminals by airplanes hired by the Service. The expenses are withdrawn from Illegal Asset Seizure Fund. Moreover, U.S. Marshals owns two 727 Jets in order of transporting criminals from state to state. Of course, criminal transportation by private Jets is very expensive, but it provides well protection to lives of criminals as well as U.S. Marshals. At the meantime, U.S. Marshals Service detains over 12,500 suspects at Federal, State, and Local prisons in the country.
    Because most prisons are too crowded with felons, not enough places for suspects, U.S. Marshals have to use special funds and local funds to expand local prisons for suspects who are not charged by Federal Court.
  6. Asset Seizure. U.S. Marshals Service has responsibility to temporarily confiscate or seize illegal property of felons. They also have power to use those properties for their expenditure after the Court allows them to do so. The total of asset seizure fund is estimated as hundred million cash besides other properties such as banks, farms, recreation centers, restaurants, lands, businesses, and personal items like gold and diamonds, cars and cash.
  7. Last but not least: Serving federal level arrest warrants to suspects or criminals.

Those above duties of U.S. Marshals are very important for the Federal Judiciary System of America.

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