Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1880

Strauder v. West Virginia

100 U.S. 303 | 25 L. Ed. 664 | 1879 U.S. LEXIS 1830

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Takeaway

In short, this case established that a State may not exclude Black citizens from jury service by law solely because of race, and that Congress may provide a federal forum to protect a criminal defendant from that denial of equal protection.

Background

Taylor Strauder, a Black man, was indicted for murder in Ohio County, West Virginia. Before trial, he sought removal of the prosecution to federal circuit court. He alleged that West Virginia law made only white male citizens eligible for jury service, excluding Black men from both grand and petit juries solely because of race.

The state trial court denied removal, overruled Strauder's motions to quash and challenges to the jury array, tried him before a jury selected under the exclusionary statute, and convicted him. The Supreme Court of West Virginia affirmed. Strauder then sought review in the Supreme Court of the United States, arguing that the jury statute violated the Fourteenth Amendment and that the state court should have transferred his case to federal court.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the Fourteenth Amendment permits a State to exclude all Black citizens from jury service solely because of race or color when a Black defendant is indicted or tried.

Holding

No. A State denies a Black defendant the equal protection of the laws when its jury-selection law excludes all Black citizens solely because of their race or color.

Reasoning

The Court read the Fourteenth Amendment in light of Reconstruction history. Its central purpose was to secure the civil rights of newly emancipated people and to protect them from the legal discrimination and racial hostility that were likely to persist after slavery. The Amendment therefore requires that state law afford Black and white persons equal legal protection.

West Virginia's statute expressly made only white male citizens eligible for jury service. That classification was not merely a neutral rule governing juror qualifications; it imposed a legal disability on Black citizens because of their color and excluded them entirely from participating in the administration of justice.

The constitutional injury was not that Strauder had a right to demand a jury containing members of his own race. Rather, he had a right to be tried by a jury selected without a law excluding every qualified person of his race. A State may set generally applicable qualifications for jurors, such as citizenship, age, sex, property ownership, or education, but it may not disqualify citizens because of race or color.

A statute that marks Black citizens as unfit to serve as jurors asserts their inferiority and reinforces the racial prejudice that the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to counteract. Requiring a Black defendant to face trial for his liberty before a jury drawn from a pool from which the State has excluded his entire race denies him equal legal protection.

Issue #2

Whether Congress could authorize removal of Strauder's state criminal prosecution to federal court when the State's jury law denied him a federally protected equal-civil-rights guarantee.

Holding

Yes. Congress validly authorized removal under Revised Statutes section 641, and Strauder's verified petition established a right to removal before trial.

Reasoning

Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment expressly empowers Congress to enforce the Amendment through appropriate legislation. Congress may protect rights created or guaranteed by the Constitution, and removal to federal court is an appropriate means of protecting a defendant whose federally secured rights are denied by state law.

Revised Statutes section 641 allowed removal of a state civil suit or criminal prosecution when a defendant was denied, or could not enforce, in state court a right secured by a federal law providing for equal civil rights. The provision operated alongside the federal civil-rights statute guaranteeing all persons the same benefit of laws and proceedings for the security of person and property as white citizens enjoy.

Strauder's petition was sufficient because it identified a facially discriminatory state statute that controlled the selection of both grand and petit jurors. Once he filed that petition before trial, the state court should have transferred the prosecution rather than proceeding with trial. Its refusal to remove the case, to quash the venire, and to sustain his challenge to the jury array was error.

Dissents

Justice Field

Reasoning

Justice Field dissented for the reasons set out in his separate opinion in Ex parte Virginia, decided the same Term. He took a narrower view of Congress's enforcement authority under the Fourteenth Amendment and objected to federal legislation that displaced state judicial processes or imposed federal consequences on state officials acting under state law. On that view, the federal removal mechanism used by the majority could not justify taking this state criminal prosecution from the state courts.

Justice Clifford

Reasoning

Justice Clifford joined Justice Field's dissent and adopted the reasoning Justice Field stated in Ex parte Virginia. He therefore rejected the majority's conclusion that Congress's Fourteenth Amendment enforcement power supported the federal intervention required by section 641.