Fugitive Felon Act: 48 Stat. 782 (Chapter 302, Public, No. 233), 18 May 1934
One of the May 1934 crime bills: "An Act Making it unlawful for any person to flee from one State to another for the purpose of avoiding prosecution or the giving of testimony in certain cases."
- Date
- 1934-05-18
- Kind
- case-file
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Docket
- 48 Stat. 782 (73d Cong., 2d Sess., ch. 302; S. 2253; Public No. 233)
- Rights
- An Act of Congress, a federal work in the public domain under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The text was read from the Library of Congress's digitised United States Statutes at Large; the page image stored here is the Library of Congress scan of that page.
Page 782 of volume 48 prints Chapter 302, with the margin “May 18, 1934. [S. 2253.] [Public, No. 233.]”: “An Act Making it unlawful for any person to flee from one State to another for the purpose of avoiding prosecution or the giving of testimony in certain cases.”
The Act provides that “it shall be […] unlawful for any person to move or travel in interstate or foreign commerce from any State, Territory, or possession of the United States, or the District of Columbia, with intent either (1) to avoid prosecution for murder, kidnaping, burglary, robbery, mayhem, rape, assault with a dangerous weapon, or extortion accompanied by threats of violence” (48 Stat. 782), or an attempt to commit any of them, or (2) to avoid giving testimony in a criminal proceeding in which a felony is charged. The penalty is a fine of not more than $5,000, imprisonment of not more than five years, or both, and the case may be prosecuted only in the federal judicial district where the original crime was alleged to have been committed.
The name “Fugitive Felon Act” is not printed in the text; it is the name used in the research request. The FBI’s history timeline speaks of the May and June 1934 bills together and does not name this Act.
