Strauder v. West Virginia
| Strauder v. West Virginia | ||||
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| Negotiates 20./21. October 1879 |
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| Decided March 1, 1880 |
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| facts | ||||
| At the time of the decision, all blacks in West Virginia were excluded from the jury. The plaintiff was a black man convicted of murder by an all-white jury. He attacked the ruling and alleged a violation of the principle of equality before the law under the 14th Amendment. | ||||
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| The exclusion of people from a jury based solely on race violates the principle of equality before the law. | ||||
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| Applied Law | ||||
| 14. Amendment to the Constitution |
Strauder v. West Virginia was one of the first United States Supreme Court cases todeal with racial discrimination .
At the time of the decision, all blacks were excluded from court hearings as a jury under West Virginia law . Strauder, a black man convicted of murder by an all- white jury , challenged the verdict on the grounds that the West Virginia rule violated the 14th Amendment's principle of equality before the law .
In the judgment drafted by William Strong , the exclusion of blacks from a jury was declared incompatible with the constitution on the basis of their race. The reason for the principle of equal treatment is "to grant the black population all civil rights as they are due to the whites and to give them the protection of the state if they are restricted by the individual states in these rights." The court did not find that the exclusion of blacks as jury members violates the rights of potential jury members; Rather, this exclusion hurts black defendants, as it selects juries "from which the state has expressly excluded members of the defendant's population".
The verdict was a victory for the rights of black accused and important for the civil rights movement; however, it also explicitly stated that gender selection was permissible.
literature
- John S. De Cani: Statistical Evidence in Jury Discrimination Cases . In: Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology . 65, No. 2, 1974, pp. 234-238. doi : 10.2307 / 1142542 .
- JR Gillespie: The Constitution and the All-White Jury . In: Kentucky Law Journal . 39, 1950, ISSN 0023-026X , p. 65.
- Benno C., Jr. Schmidt: Juries, Jurisdiction, and Race Discrimination: The Lost Promise of Strauder v. West Virginia . In: Texas Law Review . 61, No. 8, 1983, ISSN 0040-4411 , p. 1401.