Mr. Hill to Mr. Hunter.
Washington, January 9, 1901.
Sir: I have to acknowledge the receipt of your dispatch No. 481, of the 19th ultimo, in which you report that Mr. P. A. Bruni, United States consular agent at Champerico, having been summoned to attend a trial in the criminal court of Retalhuleu, wrote to the judge, saying that while he was willing to go to the court, yet he did so only out of pure good nature, as he considered that his official character freed him from any obligation to obey court summonses.
You add that the Guatemalan minister of foreign affairs objected to Mr. Bruni’s attitude and requested you to persuade the latter “to modify his ideas in this respect,” which you have done by means of a letter to Consul-General McNally, a copy of which is attached to your dispatch, and you request to be advised what course to pursue in this and similar future cases.
In reply I have to say that a consul engaged in business is amenable to summons, etc., only for causes apart from his official functions. He can not be summoned to give evidence of any matter of his consular business, nor to produce to the court any part of the consular archives.
In relation to matters not affecting their official functions consuls are not, as a general rule, exempt from process, whether missi, salaried, feed, or engaged in business or not.
In cases where the testimony of a consul may be properly required before the courts, the privilege of having such testimony taken at a consulate is not recognized by international law or usage, but depends for its existence on express conventional arrangement, which does not exist between the United States and Guatemala.
The Department would suggest that it would be proper for you to investigate what conventional privileges Guatemala may have conceded in this respect to consuls of other countries. If there are any such privileges, this Government might reasonably expect, in the absence of a treaty, that they might be extended as an act of comity by Guatemala to our consular officers in that country.
The Department limits its response to your inquiry to the statement of a few general rules, which seem applicable to the case so far as its nature is disclosed by your dispatch; but if specific instructions are desired in any particular case, the concrete case should be stated, and the Department will then give instructions accordingly.
I am, etc.,