Court Opinion

ID: 9810446
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:50:25.661472+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:39:56.084836
License: Public Domain

CuakK, J.,
concurring. I concur in the conclusion that the presiding Judge should have heard the evidence, found the facts, and rendered judgment thereon, and that only because the United States Supreme Court, the final tribunal upon all Federal questions, has so decided. Carter v. Tex., 177 U. S., 442: Gibson v. Miss., 162 U. S., 565; Neal v. Delaware, 103 U. S., 370; Strauder v. W. Va., 100 U. S., 303, and Va. v. Rives, Ibid., 313. We must bow to that authority, though I am constrained to believe that the argument of Mr. Justice Field, in his dissenting opinion in Neal v. Delaware, 103 U. S., at pages 405-409, clearly demonstrates that *792tbe Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments conferred “no warrant for any legislation of Congress interfering with the selection of jurors in the State Courts.” Chief Justice Waite also- dissented in that case, and Mr. Justice Field reiterated in that dissent what he had so well said in his previous dissent, a very able one, in Ex parte Virginia, 100 U. S., 349-370, in which dissenting opinion Mr. Justice Clifford concurred, Among other things, in that dissent, Mr. Justice Field particularly says (100 U. S., at page 368) : “If, when a colored person is accused of, a criminal offence, the presence of persons of his race on the jury by which he is to be tried is essential to secure to him the equal protection of the laws, it would seem that the presence of such persons on the bench would.be equally essential, if the Court should consist of more than one Judge, as in many cases it may; and if it should consist of a single Judge, that such protection would be impossible. A similar objection might be raised to the composition of any appellate Court to which the case, after verdict, might be carried.”
After this delicate suggestion, that to be consistent the United States Supreme Court should insist upon the admission of colored members, Mr. Justice Field proceeds: “The position that in cases where the rights of colored persons are concerned, justice will not be done to them unless they have a mixed jury, is founded upon the motion that in such cases white persons will not be fair and honest jurors. If this .position be correct, there ought not to be any white persons on the jury where the interests of colored persons only are involved. That jury would not be an honest and fair one, of which any of its members should be governed in his judgment by other considerations than the law and the evidence; and that decision would hardly be considered just which should be reached by a sort of compromise, in which the prejudices of one race yrere set off against the prejudices of the *793other. To be consistent, those who hold this notion should contend that in cases affecting members of the colored race only, the juries should be composed entirely of colored persons, and that the presiding Judge should be of the same race.”
I can add nothing to the force of Mr. Justice Field’s argument, but I can express nay concurrence in his view that the last three amendments to the United States Constitution were not intended to authorize Federal interference with the composition of juries in State Courts. The Fourteenth Amendment is the only one relied on, and that can not apply because “A jury demodÁstcáe linguae” has never in this counti'y been embraced in “due process of law,” nor requisite to the “equal protection of the laws.” If recognition of each race is required in the composition of juries, it is equally essential in the composition of the judiciary. Both are constituent elements in the administration of justice.
In this State, the laws exclude no one from the jury or grand jury because of race, neither does it exclude any one from the bench on that ground. If the words “due process of law” and “equal protection of the laws” warrant Federal interference and inquiry as to the manner of selecting jurora when negroes do not appear on the panel, the same rule will warrant investigation of the mode of selecting Judges because no- negroes are on this or the lower bench. Under the Constitution of the Union, as our fathers made it, the State prescribed the method of selecting its own juries and judges, and supervised the execution of its own laws in reference thereto. Like Justice Field, I see no warrant for Federal intereference under powers conferred by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The above cited decisions of the United States Supreme Court all hold that only when the alleged discrimination against colored jurors is by virtue of the provisions of the Constitution or statutes of the State does the right to remove *794exist, and that when the alleged exclusion of colored jurors is by virtue of the method of administering laws which contain no such discrimination, the sole remedy is by appeal to the highest Court of the State, and thence by writ of error to the Federal Supreme Court. In Gibson v. Mississippi, 162 U. S., 565, Harlan, J., reviews the uniform decisions to that effect, and sustains (at page 589) as valid the legal requirements in Mississippi “that no person should be a grand or petty juror unless he was a qualified elector and able to read and write, * * * and should possess good intelligence, sound judgment and fair character.”