# Bone v. State (198 Ark. 519)

When two black defendants appeared for their murder trial, the entire venire of twenty-four potential jurors was white. Defense counsel objected and moved the court to quash the entire venire on the ground that black citizens had been systematically excluded from juries in violation of the equal protection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. The trial judge dismissed three of the white veniremen and had the sheriff find three black men to take their place. The court denied the defendants' motion and a jury was picked. Both men were convicted.
In Bone v. State, 198 Ark. 519 (1939), the Arkansas Supreme Court held the trial judge committed error by failing to give the defendants an opportunity to present evidence of systematic exclusion of black citizens. The court reversed each man's conviction and remanded the case for a new trial. On remand, the two men were convicted of second-degree murder and each was sentenced to twenty-one years' imprisonment. Bone v. State, 200 Ark. 592 (1940). On appeal the supreme court reduced each conviction to voluntary manslaughter and resentenced each man to seven years' imprisonment.
Supreme Court of Arkansas
198 Ark. 519
Bone v. State
Appeal from Pulaski Circuit Court, First Division.
No. 4123.---Delivered: June 5, 1939.
* Court Documents
* Opinion of the Court
* CRIMINAL LAW.—The Supreme Court will indulge every reasonable presumption in support of the action of the trial court; but when the court sets forth its reason for making some particular order in a proceeding before it, the Supreme Court cannot assume that it had some other reason than the one specifically set forth for its action.
* CRIMINAL LAW—REASON FOR NOT QUASHING JURY PANEL.—Where defendants, of the African race, charged with murder, moved to quash the jury panel on the ground that although one-fifth of the population of the county was of the negro race they had been systematically excluded by the administrative officers of the state from jury service solely because of their race or color and alleging that this was, in the case against them, a denial of due process of law guaranteed by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a denial of the motion "for the reason that there has been three colored men placed on the regular panel before motion herein was filed" and without hearing evidence was error, especially where the record shows that three white jurors had without assigning reason therefor, been excused and the three colored men placed on the panel.
* CRIMINAL LAW—EXCLUSION OF NEGROES FROM JURY SERVICE.—The vice in trying a negro charged with murder by a jury of the white race lies not in the fact that there are not any members of the colored race on the jury, but in the systematic exclusion of negroes from the regular jury panel.
* INDICTMENTS AND INFORMATIONS.—Although deceased was shot once only, there was no error in charging in the information that ​both defendants shot and killed her where the record reflected that both appellants were jointly engaged in making an assault on J. D. when his wife came to his assistance and was killed, since both were principals.
Appeal from Pulaski Circuit Court, First Division; Gus Fulk, Judge; reversed.
F. W. A. Eiermann, Scipio A. Jones, Wallace L. Purifoy, Jr., Elmer Schoggen and Leon B. Ransom, for appellants.
Jack Holt, Attorney General, and Jno. P. Streepey, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
[Opinion of the court by Justice BASIL BAKER.]
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