Gius

The defendants in the court below (plaintiffs in error) were indicted under section 127 of the Penal Code of Alaska (Carter’s Annotated Alaska Codes) for the crime of keeping a house of ill fame. A trial was had before a jury of 6 persons, resulting in a verdict against the defendants. Judgment was entered in accordance with this verdict, from which a writ of error was sued out to this court.

The principal error assigned is the action of the court in compelling the defendants to go to trial before a jury of 6 persons, refusing to allow the full panel of 12 jurors. Section 171, p. 179, Code Civ.Proc. (Carter’s Ann.Alaska Codes), providing for the formation of juries, provides, among other things, as follows: “The jury shall consist of twelve persons, unless the parties consent to a less number. Such consent shall be entered in the journal: Provided, that hereafter, in trials for misdemeanors, six persons shall constitute a legal jury.”

*456 The Supreme Court of the United States, in Rassmussen v. United States, 197 U.S. 516 , 25 S.Ct. 514 , 49 L.Ed. 862 , considered the identical question presented here, and held that, under the treaty with Russia ceding Alaska and the subsequent…