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United States v. Harris, 106 U.S. 629
Case citation

Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called Reporter s or law reports, or in a 'neutral' form which will identify a decision wherever it was reported....
 (1883), sometimes referred to as the Ku Klux Case, was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest judicial body in the United States, and leads the federal United States federal courts. It consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who are nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed with th...
 held that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to penalize crimes such as assault and murder. It declared that the local governments have the power to penalize these crimes. The fact that many of these crimes were racially motivated in the south was ignored.

In the specific case, four men were removed from a Crockett County, Tennessee
Crockett County, Tennessee

Crockett County is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of 2000, the population was 14,532. The 2005 Census Estimate placed the population at 14,595 ....
 jail by a group led by Sheriff R.






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United States v. Harris, 106 U.S. 629
Case citation

Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called Reporter s or law reports, or in a 'neutral' form which will identify a decision wherever it was reported....
 (1883), sometimes referred to as the Ku Klux Case, was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States
Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest judicial body in the United States, and leads the federal United States federal courts. It consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, who are nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed with th...
 held that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to penalize crimes such as assault and murder. It declared that the local governments have the power to penalize these crimes. The fact that many of these crimes were racially motivated in the south was ignored.

In the specific case, four men were removed from a Crockett County, Tennessee
Crockett County, Tennessee

Crockett County is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of 2000, the population was 14,532. The 2005 Census Estimate placed the population at 14,595 ....
 jail by a group led by Sheriff R. G. Harris and 19 others. The four men were beaten and one was killed. A deputy sheriff tried to prevent the act, but failed. Section 2 of the Force Act of 1871 was declared unconstitutional on the theory that an Act to enforce the Equal Protection Clause
Equal Protection Clause

The Equal Protection Clause, part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to the United States Constitution, provides that "no state shall ......
 applied only to state action, not to state inaction.

See also



Further reading



External links

  • Full text of the opinion courtesy of Findlaw.com.
  • The summary from OYEZ is factually inaccurate in that it states the four prisoners were black. According to Crockett TN and Haywood TN censuses as well as other temporal records, they were in fact white.