Navy Department 6 July 1799 Sir, I have considered attentively your reference to the heads of Departments, in the case of Serjeant Hunt, sentenced to death by a Court-Martial. The officers who composed the Court, it appears, had not received their Commissions, but they had been notified of their appointment, had returned to your Office their acceptance and oath of Office, and actually entered upon duty. The Commission I consider as an evidence of appointment, not the appointment itself. And tho it is desireable that in all cases where Officers enter upon duty, they should have it in their power, by producing their Commissions, to shew the clearest and best evidence of authority; yet I cannot conceive that the want of this evidence, in cases where their authority could be sufficiently established by other evidence, should vitiate their proceedings. I know that during the last war, nothing was more common than for officers to serve for years, and to sit on Courts Martial, without Commissions. You observe that when the proceedings of the Court were first presented to you, it did not appear upon the face of them, that two thirds of the Members had concurred, as required in a sentence of death, by the 8th article of the appendix to the rules and articles of war, that the proceedings were returned to General Hamilton, with this objection stated, that he caused the omission to be supplied by an interlineation in the sentence, and the President of the Court, and Judge Advocate added a certificate under their signatures, that more than two thirds of the Members did concur, and that the words interlined were omitted by accident, at the time of the first signature of the Sentence. This whole proceeding, after your transmission of the sentence to General Hamilton, appears to me to have been illegal. Without entering into the question, whether the President of the Court, after having dissolved it, could again assemble it and in the presence, and with the concurrence of the whole Court, and in the presence of the prisoner, could alter the proceedings, it is clear to my understanding, that the President and Judge Advocate alone, had no right to do it. The proceedings of a Court Martial are read and I believe signed in the presence of the Court. To admit that the President and Judge Advocate, could afterwards alter the proceedings, would be to subject the fame, liberty, and life of a man, to the will of two individuals to whom the law gives no such privilege. If then, the sentence as first transmitted, was not sufficient to justify the execution of this man, no defect has been cured by the subsequent proceedings. But whether the sentence, as first transmitted, was or was not sufficient, is a question, which in my opinion, must depend upon the practice heretofore observed in the Army, in similar cases. If it has been the invariable practice to insert in sentences of death, the words "two thirds of the Court concurring," or words to that effect, the omission of the words in the present instance, must vitiate the proceedings of the Court. If on the other hand, it has not always been the practice to insert words to shew that two thirds of the Court did concur in sentences of death, then I presume that it was a point well understood in the Army, that the very sentence of death implied the concurrence of two thirds of the Members. This is an idea which the very wording of the 8th Section of the Appendix forcibly impresses on the mind. My opinion then, upon the whole of this case, depends upon a matter of record in your Office. I have the honor to be with the greatest respect, Sir, your most obed^t. humble Servant. (signed) Ben Stoddert The Honourable The Secretary of War.