Moore v. Dempsey
Encyclopedia
Moore et al. v. Dempsey, , was a United States Supreme Court
case in which the Court ruled 6-2 that the defendants' mob-dominated trials deprived them of due process
guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
and reversed the district court's decision declining the petitioners' writ of habeas corpus
.
in Phillips County, Arkansas, which followed the shooting death of a white railroad security employee on September 30, 1919 after shots were exchanged outside a church where a black tenant farmers union was meeting. Who fired the first shot is unknown. The governor, Charles Hillman Brough
, led a detachment of federal troops into the county, arresting hundreds of blacks and allowing other blacks to move about in public only if they had a pass signed by military authorities and attested by a reputable white citizen. In the week after the shooting roving bands of whites and federal troops killed upwards of two hundred blacks.
In the aftermath of the violence, a grand jury made up of local landlords and merchants decided who would be indicted. Those blacks willing to testify against others and who agreed to work on whatever terms their landlords set for them were let go; those who had been labeled ringleaders or who were judged unreliable were indicted. According to the affidavits later supplied by the defendants, many of the prisoners had been beaten, whipped or tortured by electric shocks to extract testimony or confessions and threatened with death if they later recanted their testimony.
On November 2, 1919 the Phillips County authorities began trying the defendants on charges of the murder of connected to the violence. Eleven defendants were sentenced to death after perfunctory trials: counsel for the accused, who did not meet their clients until the trial began, called no witnesses, produced no evidence, and did not call on the defendants to testify. The first trial took all of three-quarters of an hour, after which the white jury returned a guilty verdict on the first-degree murder charge in eight minutes. Later trials were just as short; the juries took less than ten minutes to reach a verdict in each case. A twelfth defendant was sentenced to death several weeks later, after the jury deliberated for four minutes.
Thirty-six other defendants chose to plead guilty to second-degree murder rather than face trial. Sixty-seven other defendants were convicted and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.
The trials were mob-dominated, as crowds of armed whites milled around the courthouse. There was never a chance of an acquittal, as the jurors feared the mob. The Arkansas Gazette
applauded the trials as the triumph of the rule of law, as none of the defendants had been lynched
.
, which enabled him to obtain an interview with Governor Brough, who in turn gave him a letter of recommendation and his autographed photograph.
White was only in Phillips County for a brief time before his identity was discovered; he took the first train back to Little Rock. The conductor told him that he was leaving "just when the fun is going to start", because they had found out that there was a "damned yellow
nigger passing for white and the boys are going to get him". Asked what they would do to him, the conductor told White that "when they get through with him he won't pass for white no more!"
White published his findings in the Daily News, the Chicago Defender
and The Nation, as well as the NAACP's own magazine The Crisis
. Governor Brough asked the United States Postal Service
to prohibit the mailing of the Chicago Defender and Crisis while others attempted to enjoin
distribution of the Defender at the local level.
, an African-American attorney from Little Rock, and Colonel George W. Murphy, a Confederate veteran, former Attorney-General for the State of Arkansas and unsuccessful candidate for Governor on the Progressive Party
ticket.
The defendants' lawyers were able to obtain reversal of the verdicts by the Arkansas Supreme Court in six of the cases in which death sentences had been imposed on the ground that the jury had failed to specify whether the defendants were guilty of murder in the first or second degree; those cases were accordingly sent back for retrial. The Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the death sentences of the six other defendants, rejecting the challenge to the all-white jury as untimely and finding that the mob atmosphere and use of coerced testimony did not deny the defendants the due process of law to which they were entitled. Those defendants unsuccessfully petitioned the United States Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari
from the Arkansas Supreme Court's decision.
The defendants petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus
, alleging that the proceedings that took place in the Arkansas state court, while ostensibly complying with the requirements of a trial, were in fact only a form, and that the accused were convicted under the pressure of the mob with blatant disregard for their constitutional rights. They had originally intended to file their petition in federal court, but the only sitting judge was assigned to other judicial duties in Minnesota
at the time and would not return to Arkansas until after the defendants' scheduled execution date. The state chancery
court issued the writ, which, although later overturned by the state Supreme Court, postponed the execution date long enough to permit the defendants to seek habeas corpus relief in federal court.
The state of Arkansas took a narrowly legalistic position, based on the United States Supreme Court's earlier decision in Frank v. Mangum. The State did not dispute the defendants' evidence of torture used to obtain confessions or mob intimidation, but argued that, even if true, this did not amount to a denial of due process. The district court agreed, denying the writ, but also found that there was probable cause for an appeal, allowing the defendants to take their case to the Supreme Court.
. In a 6-2 decision, Justice Holmes wrote for the Court that a mob-dominated trial violated the due process provisions guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment and that federal courts, upon being petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, were compelled to review such claims of discrimination in state trials and to order the release of defendants thus unfairly convicted.
The Court had previously ruled in Frank v. Mangum that, while mob interference with a criminal trial would amount to a denial of the due process promised by the Fourteenth Amendment, the state could undo the constitutional violation by allowing the defendant to challenge the conviction on appeal, foreclosing any federal review of the allegations of mob intimidation. The Court effectively overruled Franks, holding that the district court presented with a habeas corpus petition must examine the facts presented to determine if the defendants' rights had been violated.
Holmes' opinion acknowledged the rule in Frank, while holding that subsequent judicial review would not cure constitutional violations if the state courts, in fact, failed to correct the wrong:
The Court therefore remanded the matter to the district court for it to determine if the defendants' claims of mob intimidation and coerced testimony were true:
, deemed the issue at stake to be "one of gravity". He suggested that if any man convicted of a crime in a state court may try his luck with the federal court by swearing that some events that have abridged his constitutionally-protected rights took place, the already long list of permitted delays in punishment would grow even longer.
When commenting on the Committee of Seven that apparently solemnly promised to a lynch-ready mob that "the law would be carried out", for example, Holmes notes that "According to affidavits of two white men and the colored witnesses on whose testimony the petitioners were convicted, […] the Committee made good their promise by calling colored witnesses and having them whipped and tortured until they would say what was wanted…"
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
case in which the Court ruled 6-2 that the defendants' mob-dominated trials deprived them of due process
Due process
Due process is the legal code that the state must venerate all of the legal rights that are owed to a person under the principle. Due process balances the power of the state law of the land and thus protects individual persons from it...
guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
and reversed the district court's decision declining the petitioners' writ of habeas corpus
Habeas corpus
is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. The remedy can be sought by the prisoner or by another person coming to his aid. Habeas corpus originated in the English legal system, but it is now available in many nations...
.
The facts of the case
Moore v. Dempsey was the first case concerning the justice given to African-Americans in the South that came before the Court in the twentieth century. The case resulted from the Elaine Race RiotElaine Race Riot
The Elaine Race Riot, also called the Elaine Massacre, occurred September 30, 1919 in the town of Elaine in Phillips County, Arkansas, in the Arkansas Delta, where sharecropping by African American farmers was prevalent on plantations of white landowners.Approximately 100 African American farmers,...
in Phillips County, Arkansas, which followed the shooting death of a white railroad security employee on September 30, 1919 after shots were exchanged outside a church where a black tenant farmers union was meeting. Who fired the first shot is unknown. The governor, Charles Hillman Brough
Charles Hillman Brough
Charles Hillman Brough was the 25th Governor of the U.S. state of Arkansas from 1917 to 1921.Charles Brough was born in Clinton, Mississippi. In 1894, he graduated from Mississippi College in Clinton. He earned his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in 1898, and graduated from the law school at the...
, led a detachment of federal troops into the county, arresting hundreds of blacks and allowing other blacks to move about in public only if they had a pass signed by military authorities and attested by a reputable white citizen. In the week after the shooting roving bands of whites and federal troops killed upwards of two hundred blacks.
In the aftermath of the violence, a grand jury made up of local landlords and merchants decided who would be indicted. Those blacks willing to testify against others and who agreed to work on whatever terms their landlords set for them were let go; those who had been labeled ringleaders or who were judged unreliable were indicted. According to the affidavits later supplied by the defendants, many of the prisoners had been beaten, whipped or tortured by electric shocks to extract testimony or confessions and threatened with death if they later recanted their testimony.
On November 2, 1919 the Phillips County authorities began trying the defendants on charges of the murder of connected to the violence. Eleven defendants were sentenced to death after perfunctory trials: counsel for the accused, who did not meet their clients until the trial began, called no witnesses, produced no evidence, and did not call on the defendants to testify. The first trial took all of three-quarters of an hour, after which the white jury returned a guilty verdict on the first-degree murder charge in eight minutes. Later trials were just as short; the juries took less than ten minutes to reach a verdict in each case. A twelfth defendant was sentenced to death several weeks later, after the jury deliberated for four minutes.
Thirty-six other defendants chose to plead guilty to second-degree murder rather than face trial. Sixty-seven other defendants were convicted and sentenced to various terms of imprisonment.
The trials were mob-dominated, as crowds of armed whites milled around the courthouse. There was never a chance of an acquittal, as the jurors feared the mob. The Arkansas Gazette
Arkansas Gazette
The Arkansas Gazette, known as the oldest newspaper west of the Mississippi River, and located from 1908 until its October 18, 1991 closing at the now historic Gazette Building, was for many years the newspaper of record for Little Rock and the State of Arkansas...
applauded the trials as the triumph of the rule of law, as none of the defendants had been lynched
Lynching
Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob, often by hanging, but also by burning at the stake or shooting, in order to punish an alleged transgressor, or to intimidate, control, or otherwise manipulate a population of people. It is related to other means of social control that...
.
The investigation
The NAACP sent its assistant secretary, Walter F. White, to investigate the violence in October, 1919. White, who was blonde and blue-eyed and able to pass for white, was granted credentials from the Chicago Daily NewsChicago Daily News
The Chicago Daily News was an afternoon daily newspaper published between 1876 and 1978 in Chicago, Illinois.-History:The Daily News was founded by Melville E. Stone, Percy Meggy, and William Dougherty in 1875 and began publishing early the next year...
, which enabled him to obtain an interview with Governor Brough, who in turn gave him a letter of recommendation and his autographed photograph.
White was only in Phillips County for a brief time before his identity was discovered; he took the first train back to Little Rock. The conductor told him that he was leaving "just when the fun is going to start", because they had found out that there was a "damned yellow
High yellow
High yellow, occasionally simply yellow , is a term for very light-skinned persons of Black descent. It is a reference to the golden yellow skin tone of some mixed-race people...
nigger passing for white and the boys are going to get him". Asked what they would do to him, the conductor told White that "when they get through with him he won't pass for white no more!"
White published his findings in the Daily News, the Chicago Defender
Chicago Defender
The Chicago Defender is a Chicago based newspaper founded in 1905 by an African American for primarily African American readers.In just three years from 1919–1922 the Defender also attracted the writing talents of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks....
and The Nation, as well as the NAACP's own magazine The Crisis
The Crisis
The Crisis is the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People , and was founded in 1910 by W. E. B. Du Bois , Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, W.S. Braithwaite, M. D. Maclean.The original title of the journal was...
. Governor Brough asked the United States Postal Service
United States Postal Service
The United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
to prohibit the mailing of the Chicago Defender and Crisis while others attempted to enjoin
Injunction
An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that requires a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions...
distribution of the Defender at the local level.
The appeal
The NAACP also took on the task of organizing the defendants' appeal. The NAACP for a time attempted to conceal its role in the appeals, given the hostile reception its report on the violence and the trials had received. Once it undertook to organize the defense it went to work vigorously, raising more than $50,000 and hiring Scipio Africanus JonesScipio Africanus Jones
Scipio Africanus Jones was an African-American educator, attorney, judge, philanthropist, and Republican politician from the state of Arkansas...
, an African-American attorney from Little Rock, and Colonel George W. Murphy, a Confederate veteran, former Attorney-General for the State of Arkansas and unsuccessful candidate for Governor on the Progressive Party
Progressive Party (United States, 1912)
The Progressive Party of 1912 was an American political party. It was formed after a split in the Republican Party between President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt....
ticket.
The defendants' lawyers were able to obtain reversal of the verdicts by the Arkansas Supreme Court in six of the cases in which death sentences had been imposed on the ground that the jury had failed to specify whether the defendants were guilty of murder in the first or second degree; those cases were accordingly sent back for retrial. The Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the death sentences of the six other defendants, rejecting the challenge to the all-white jury as untimely and finding that the mob atmosphere and use of coerced testimony did not deny the defendants the due process of law to which they were entitled. Those defendants unsuccessfully petitioned the United States Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari
Certiorari
Certiorari is a type of writ seeking judicial review, recognized in U.S., Roman, English, Philippine, and other law. Certiorari is the present passive infinitive of the Latin certiorare...
from the Arkansas Supreme Court's decision.
The defendants petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus
Habeas corpus
is a writ, or legal action, through which a prisoner can be released from unlawful detention. The remedy can be sought by the prisoner or by another person coming to his aid. Habeas corpus originated in the English legal system, but it is now available in many nations...
, alleging that the proceedings that took place in the Arkansas state court, while ostensibly complying with the requirements of a trial, were in fact only a form, and that the accused were convicted under the pressure of the mob with blatant disregard for their constitutional rights. They had originally intended to file their petition in federal court, but the only sitting judge was assigned to other judicial duties in Minnesota
Minnesota
Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...
at the time and would not return to Arkansas until after the defendants' scheduled execution date. The state chancery
Court of equity
A chancery court, equity court or court of equity is a court that is authorized to apply principles of equity, as opposed to law, to cases brought before it.These courts began with petitions to the Lord Chancellor of England...
court issued the writ, which, although later overturned by the state Supreme Court, postponed the execution date long enough to permit the defendants to seek habeas corpus relief in federal court.
The state of Arkansas took a narrowly legalistic position, based on the United States Supreme Court's earlier decision in Frank v. Mangum. The State did not dispute the defendants' evidence of torture used to obtain confessions or mob intimidation, but argued that, even if true, this did not amount to a denial of due process. The district court agreed, denying the writ, but also found that there was probable cause for an appeal, allowing the defendants to take their case to the Supreme Court.
U.S. Supreme Court Proceedings
The Court considered not the guilt or innocence of the accused black men, but rather whether their rights were abridged under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth AmendmentFourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
. In a 6-2 decision, Justice Holmes wrote for the Court that a mob-dominated trial violated the due process provisions guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment and that federal courts, upon being petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus, were compelled to review such claims of discrimination in state trials and to order the release of defendants thus unfairly convicted.
Justice Oliver W. Holmes, Jr.
In his majority opinion, Associate Justice Holmes outlined the pertinent facts of the case, in a somewhat acerbic manner,, before proceeding to the Court’s considerations and decision.The Court had previously ruled in Frank v. Mangum that, while mob interference with a criminal trial would amount to a denial of the due process promised by the Fourteenth Amendment, the state could undo the constitutional violation by allowing the defendant to challenge the conviction on appeal, foreclosing any federal review of the allegations of mob intimidation. The Court effectively overruled Franks, holding that the district court presented with a habeas corpus petition must examine the facts presented to determine if the defendants' rights had been violated.
Holmes' opinion acknowledged the rule in Frank, while holding that subsequent judicial review would not cure constitutional violations if the state courts, in fact, failed to correct the wrong:
- We assume in accordance with that case that the corrective process supplied by the State may be so adequate that interference by habeas corpus ought not to be allowed. It certainly is true that mere mistakes of law in the course of a trial are not to be corrected in that way. But if the case is that the whole proceeding is a mask—that counsel, jury and judge were swept to the fatal end by an irresistible wave of public passion, and that the State Courts failed to correct the wrong, neither perfection in the machinery for correction nor the possibility that the trial court and counsel saw no other way of avoiding an immediate outbreak of the mob can prevent this Court from securing to the petitioners their constitutional rights.
The Court therefore remanded the matter to the district court for it to determine if the defendants' claims of mob intimidation and coerced testimony were true:
- We shall not say more concerning the corrective process afforded to the petitioners than that it does not seem to us sufficient to allow a Judge of the United States to escape the duty of examining the facts for himself when if true as alleged they make the trial absolutely void. We have confined the statement to facts admitted by the demurrer. We will not say that they cannot be met, but it appears to us unavoidable that the District Judge should find whether the facts alleged are true and whether they can be explained so far as to leave the state proceedings undisturbed.
McReynolds' dissent
Justice James C. McReynolds, joined by Justice George SutherlandGeorge Sutherland
Alexander George Sutherland was an English-born U.S. jurist and political figure. One of four appointments to the Supreme Court by President Warren G. Harding, he served as an Associate Justice of the U.S...
, deemed the issue at stake to be "one of gravity". He suggested that if any man convicted of a crime in a state court may try his luck with the federal court by swearing that some events that have abridged his constitutionally-protected rights took place, the already long list of permitted delays in punishment would grow even longer.
Effects of the Decision
Per the Court’s ruling, the case was sent back to lower courts, where Arkansas freed all of the men as well as the other defendants who had been convicted of lesser charges and who were still imprisoned. Moore is significant for establishing precedent for wider use of federal writs of habeas corpus to oversee state court convictions that occurred in violation of federal constitutional rights, as well as marking the beginning of stricter scrutiny by the Supreme Court of state criminal trials.External links
- Full decision and opinion courtesy of www.findlaw.com
- Nationalization of the Bill of Rights
- The Phillips County Riot Cases
See also
- Frank v. Mangum
- Palko v. ConnecticutPalko v. ConnecticutPalko v. Connecticut, , was a United States Supreme Court case concerning the incorporation of the Fifth Amendment protection against double jeopardy.-Background:...
- Fourteenth AmendmentFourteenth Amendment to the United States ConstitutionThe Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
- Elaine Race RiotElaine Race RiotThe Elaine Race Riot, also called the Elaine Massacre, occurred September 30, 1919 in the town of Elaine in Phillips County, Arkansas, in the Arkansas Delta, where sharecropping by African American farmers was prevalent on plantations of white landowners.Approximately 100 African American farmers,...
Footnotes
From Justice Holmes’ opinion: "According to the allegations and affidavits there never was a chance for the petitioners to be acquitted; no juryman could have voted for an acquittal and continued to live in Phillips County and if any prisoner by any chance had been acquitted by a jury he could not have escaped the mob."When commenting on the Committee of Seven that apparently solemnly promised to a lynch-ready mob that "the law would be carried out", for example, Holmes notes that "According to affidavits of two white men and the colored witnesses on whose testimony the petitioners were convicted, […] the Committee made good their promise by calling colored witnesses and having them whipped and tortured until they would say what was wanted…"